Sorcerers of Majipoor

1

Korsibar had been in residence at the Castle for five days before he first brought himself to climb the steps that led to the Confalume Throne.

The throne was his by legitimate right: he had no doubt of that, or hardly any. Now and again, in the night, he awakened in a chilly sweat, having had some new sending of the Lady to unsettle his sleep, or even just a troubled recurrent dream that did not seem to be a sending, in which someone had arisen before him and pointed a jabbing finger and said to him, “Why is your father’s crown sitting there above your ears, Prince Korsibar?” But in his waking hours he had no difficulty looking upon himself as king. He had the crown, which he wore some part of every day, so that others would get accustomed to seeing him with it. He garbed himself in a Coronal’s robes, green and gold, with ermine trim. When he went to and fro in the halls, they all made starbursts to him, and averted their eyes, and said, “Yes, my lord,” and “Of course, my lord,” to everything he might choose to say.

Yes, he was the Coronal Lord. There could be no doubt of it. A little residual surprise over it still lurked in his soul, perhaps: for he had been from the day of his birth simply Prince Korsibar, with no hope of rising to anything beyond that, and now all of a sudden he was Lord Korsibar, and the swiftness and newness of it clung to him. But there was no denying those starbursts, or those averted eyes. He was truly Coronal.

All the same, he somehow refrained from ascending the throne itself those first four days.

There was a great deal for him to do away from the throne room. Supervising the transfer of his private quarters, for one thing, from his old suite on the far side of the Pinitor Court to the Coronal’s much grander apartments, a virtual palace within the Castle, in the wing known as Lord Thraym’s Tower.

Korsibar had often wandered those splendid rooms, of course. But then they had been filled with his father’s uncountable hoard of strange and rare things, the little dragon-ivory sculptures that he loved so much and the shimmering statuettes of spun glass and the collections of prehistoric artifacts and the mounted insects, bright as jewels, in their frames, and the massive volumes of esoteric lore and all the rest, the fine porcelains and the incomparable Makroposopos weavings and the cabinet containing silver coins of all the rulers, Pontifex on one side and Coronal on the other, going back to the dawn of time.

None of that was here now, though, for Lord Confalume had known when he went down to the Labyrinth to await Prankipin’s death that he was never going to return to Lord Thraym’s Tower as Coronal: he had taken many of his collections with him on the journey, and the rest had gone into storage, or into the Castle museum. So Korsibar found the Coronal’s rooms bare and strangely forbidding when he entered them for the first time after coming to the throne. He had never noticed before how off-putting those harsh groins of gray-green stone could seem, how bleak the bare black flagstone floors.

Therefore in these first days he had set about filling the place with things of his own. He had never been much of an acquirer, though. Lord Confalume, in his forty-three years at the Castle, had insatiably collected whatever had struck his fancy, and there had been all the gifts flooding in from every quarter of the world besides.

But by choice and temperament Korsibar owned very little other than his wardrobe of fine clothing and his array of hunting and sporting equipment, his bows and swords and the like. His furniture was commonplace—Thismet had often chided him about that—and of paintings, bowls, carvings, draperies, and the like he had hardly anything at all, and what little there was of it, quite ordinary. That needed to be remedied. Living in bare stone rooms of such magnitude as these would be a depressing business. He called for Count Farquanor, who was glad to be of service in almost any capacity, and said, “Find me something to fill this place. Get pieces out of the museum, if you have to. But nothing famous, nothing that will attract envious comment. Let them be decent-looking things, that’s all I ask, no eyesores, nothing radical, just pleasant things that will make these rooms look like a place where somebody actually lives.”

Farquanor’s idea of what constituted an eyesore and what was a decent-looking thing, it seemed, was somewhat different from Korsibar’s. So there was a considerable coming and going of furnishings in those first few days, and that took up time.

Then, too, there was the job of becoming familiar with the Coronal’s official suite, not as his father’s occasional visitor but as the man who actually sat behind the splendid palisander desk with the starburstlike grain in it and did whatever work was supposed to be done at that desk.

There had not yet been time, of course, for any legislation to be reaching him. The Council had been in suspension all during the period of Prankipin’s slow decline, and would remain in abeyance until Korsibar had had time to reconfirm the members that he was holding over and to appoint the new ones that he meant to select. All he had done thus far was to tell Oljebbin that he could go on being High Counsellor. Sooner or later he would need to ask Oljebbin to step down, and replace him, he supposed, with Farquanor; but there was time for that later.

Still, even if there were no new laws yet for him to read and approve, there were other matters requiring his attention, trivial things, appointments of provincial administrators to confirm, routine proclamations of various local holidays—there were a hundred different holidays a day all over the world, it seemed, this festival in Narabal and this one in Bailemoona and that one in Gorbidit and something else in Ganiboon, and the Coronal had to scribble his name on a piece of paper to make each one official. He did some of that. He received delegations from the mayors of half a dozen of the Inner Cities too—it was too soon for the delegations from more distant cities to get to the Castle—and listened solemnly as they expressed their confidence in the benefits and wonders that his reign would bring forth.

And also there were the coronation festivities to plan, the games and feasts and such. All that had been given over to Mandrykarn and Venta and Count Irani, but they kept running in constantly to consult him about this matter or that, unwilling so early in the new regime to risk employing their own judgment.

And so on, and so on. Would it be like this all the time, or was this simply the combined effect of the old Coronal’s having been away from the Castle for so many months, and the new one needing to perform all manner of new-Coronal tasks?

But at last on the fifth day there came a few open hours; and it occurred to Korsibar that this might be a good opportunity to investigate the throne. To try it out for size, so to speak.

He went alone. He knew the way well; he had been present at the building of this place as a boy, had looked on day by day as it took form. A clutter of little rooms that went back to early times at the Castle led up to it, a robing-room of Lord Vildivar’s time, a judgment-hall that was said to go back to Lord Haspar. Lord Confalume had planned eventually to replace them with chambers that were more fitting accompaniment for the throne room beyond. Perhaps I will do that, Korsibar thought. The Coronal always does some reconstruction hereabouts.

Down a shadowy stone-arched passageway, turn left, across a chapel of some sort, turn right, and there it was: the great gold-sheathed ceiling beams, the glowing floor of yellow gurna-wood, the inlaid gems, the tapestries. Everything was shining with an inner light, even in the near-darkness of the vast empty room. And there, against the far wall, rose the Confalume Throne in solitary grandeur, that giant block of ruby-streaked black opal atop the stepped pedestal of dark mahogany. Korsibar stood a time in wonder before it, letting his hand rest lightly on one of the silver pillars that upheld the golden canopy above it. Then he took a step, and another, and another. His legs were quivering a little from his knees to his ankles.

Up.

Turn. Face the hall.

Sit.

That was all it took. Climb up, sit down. He placed his arms on the two satin-smooth rests and looked across the way, through the dimness, toward the tapestry of Lord Stiamot accepting the submission of the Metamorphs that hung on the opposite wall.

“Stiamot!” he said. His voice carried easily, echoing in the empty hall. “Dizimaule! Kryphon!” Coronals, ancient ones, great ones.

Then, saying it slowly, enjoying the majestic sound the rolling syllables of his father’s name made as they came from his tongue, “Confalume. Con-fa-lume.” And then, loudly, resonantly: “Korsibar! Lord Korsibar, Coronal of Majipoor.”

“Long live Lord Korsibar!” came an answering voice out of the shadows somewhere to his left, astonishing him so much he nearly bolted from the throne.

Korsibar’s face flamed scarlet in embarrassment at being overheard in his puerile self-congratulation. He squinted and stared.

“Who—Thismet? Is that you?”

“I saw you go in, and I followed after you.” She stepped out into plainer view. “Taking the measure of it, are you? How does it feel, sitting there?”

“Strange. Very strange. But quite acceptable.”

“Yes. I would imagine so. Get up and let me try it.”

“You know I can’t do that. The throne—this is a consecrated seat, Thismet!”

“Yes. Of course it is. Sit up straighter, Korsibar. You’ve got your right shoulder lower than your left. That’s better. You’re the king now. You have to sit straight. A decent show of majesty, that’s what’s necessary.—Do you know, I dreamed one night while we were still at the Labyrinth that I came sleepwalking into the throne room and found you sitting just like this, all by yourself in the darkness?”

“Did you, now?” Korsibar said, making no great show of interest. She was always dreaming things, Thismet was.

“Yes. Only it was so dark that I didn’t recognize you at first. I stood right here, where I am now. And there was a second throne identical to this one, a twin throne, Korsibar, behind me against the far wall where the Stiamot tapestry is now. I made the starburst sign to you; and you pointed across the room to the other thopne and said that that was my seat over there and asked me why I didn’t go to it. So I sat down on it and a great light began to shine down from the ceiling, and then finally I could see that it was you on this throne, wearing the Coronal’s crown. And that was when I first understood that you were going to be Coronal.”

“A very prophetic dream.”

“Yes. And a second throne, Korsibar, one for me! Wasn’t that an interesting feature?”

“Dreams, yes, they show us all sorts of unusual things,” he said in an offhanded way. He stroked the armrests again. “This was something that I never dreamed of, sister. I wouldn’t have dared to! But how good it feels to be sitting here. Coronal! The Coronal Lord Korsibar! Imagine it!”

“Let me try it, Korsibar.”

“It isn’t possible. It would be blasphemous.”

“There was a second throne in my dream, and you told me to sit on that.”

“In your dream, yes,” Korsibar said.

2

Svor said, fingering the elaborately embellished invitation that Count Iram had brought, “Then you really mean to go, Prestimion? You’ll actually do this thing?”

“There’s no other path I can take,” said Prestimion. They were gathered, the four of them, in Prestimion’s shooting-range on the stable side of Muldemar House, where he had been at targets since the departure of Korsibar’s envoy two hours before.

Septach Melayn said to Svor, “The Coronal of Majipoor invites the Prince of Muldemar to attend the festivities at the Castle. Forget which Coronal, forget which prince. To refuse such an invitation would be unpardonable at any time. But to refuse it now would be virtually an act of war.”

“And are we not already at war?” asked Gialaurys. “Were we not driven away from the Castle by armed men when we sought peacefully to enter it?”

Prestimion said, “That was before Korsibar had possession. He was unsure of himself then, and of our intentions. Now he’s firmly in control. He invites the princes of the Mount to attend him. I have to go.”

“And bend the knee before him?” Gialaurys cried. “What a humiliation, prince!”

“It’s humiliating, yes. But no more so than having to slink away from the Labyrinth by ourselves, when all the rest accompanied the new Coronal on his glorious journey up the Glayge.” Prestimion, smiling bleakly, ran one finger two or three times along the string of his bow. “The throne has gone to Korsibar. That is the true humiliation. All else dangles down from that as amulets dangle from a chain.”

Svor said, “As you surely know, I have some little skill at geomancy, Prestimion. I’ve drawn the runes for this adventure you propose. Would you hear my findings?”

“Hear, yes. Give credence to, probably not.”

Svor smiled patiently. “As you choose. The chart,” he said, “shows that we would be putting ourselves into peril by going to the Castle at this time.”

“Putting ourselves into peril!” cried Septach Melayn with a great burst of high-pitched laughter. “Four men riding into a castle held by a whole army of our enemies, and you need to draw charts to tell us that the trip’s dangerous? Ah, Svor, Svor, what a keen-eyed seer you are! But it’s a peril I think can be faced.”

“And if he takes hold of us straightaway, and strikes off our heads?” Svor asked.

“Such things are not done,” said Prestimion. “But even if they were, Korsibar is not of that sort. Is that what your chart foretells for us, that we lose our heads?”

“Not explicitly. Only great peril.”

“We know already that that’s so,” Prestimion said. “Be that as it may: I must go, Svor. Septach Melayn has said he’ll accompany me; and I hope you and Gialaurys will also, despite the gloomy forecasts of your charts. This trip to the Castle may yet prove a death-trap for us, but I think not. And to ignore the invitation is open defiance. The time’s not yet come for such a breach with Korsibar.”

Gialaurys said, “Oh, defy him, Prestimion, defy him outright, and let there be an end to this pussyfooting! The Procurator promises you troops. Let us get ourselves out of here, and form a battle line somewhere out in a safe part of Alhanroel, in the plains beyond the Trikkala Mountains or even farther, along the Alaisor coast if that’s the best place, and have Dantirya Sambail send us his army there, and we’ll march on the Castle and take it, and that will be that.”

Prestimion said, laughing, “As simply as that? No, Gialaurys. I don’t want to bring war into the world unless there’s no other way. This new government has no legitimacy: it’ll fall of its own failings. Give Korsibar enough rope, I say, and let him tie the noose around his throat himself. I’ve waited this long for the throne; I can wait a little while longer, rather than plunging us all into a war that will surely harm winners nearly as much as losers.”

“If you are bound on this course,” Svor said, his eyes suddenly brightening, “then I have a suggestion.”

“Let me hear it, then.”

“Korsibar took the crown in the Court of Thrones by having his wizard Sanibak-Thastimoon cast a spell that clouded minds, and when all was clear again, the crown had passed to him and there was no gainsaying it. Septach Melayn was there: his mind was one of those clouded.

Very well. What is gained by sorcery can be lost by sorcery. I have a spell taught me by one who knows such things, will reduce Korsibar to a babbling idiot. We go to him at the Castle; stand before him as he sits upon the throne; I say the words and make the movements, and all his capacity is lost, such as it is. When they perceive what has happened—”

“No,” said Prestimion.

“There’ll be no option but to make you king in his stead.”

“No, Svor. No. Even if I believed that such a spell would do the task, do I want it to be said, a thousand years after, that one thief stole the crown from another? If the throne’s to be mine, it’ll come to me the way it came to Confalume and Prankipin and all those who went before them. Not by witchery, not by fraud.”

“Prince, I beg you—”

“A third time, no. And no again.” Prestimion lifted his bow, put an arrow in place, and sent it straight to the heart of the target. And another, and a third after that to split the shaft. Then he said, “I pray you, friends, make yourselves ready now for the trip to the Castle, if you plan to come with me. And if you will not go, well, that should not be cause for woe between us. But one way or the other, I must leave you now: I have word that my mother would speak with me before I go.”

The Princess Therissa was in her reading-gallery on the third floor of the great house, a little library apart from the formal one downstairs. This was a quiet nook lined on all walls with shelves of dark wood crowded with her favorite books, and furnished with banquettes covered in soft red leather where she was fond of spending long hours during the season of mists, reading by herself or to any of her children who happened to be with her. It was a place much beloved by Prestimion himself.

But when he entered it now his eye took in two immediate strangenesses.

For one, there were some big leatherbound books with iron clasps stacked on the old table in the middle of the room, books that he had not seen in here before but which looked very much like those texts of sorcery and incantation that he had seen so copiously strewn about beside the deathbed of the Pontifex Prankipin. That was a dark sign, that his mother should have given herself over so thoroughly to these writings. For another, the Princess Therissa was not alone. The lank and stoop-shouldered figure of a haggard old white-haired man stood beside her. It was this man who had been pointed out to Prestimion soon after his arrival: Galbifond, his mother’s newly hired diviner, he who had been taken on to give advice on the likelihood of rainfall in the vineyard and the proper time for gathering the harvest.

Prestimion now remembered him from time past. He was a one-time field hand who had left their employ a few years back and gone off to Stee or Vilimong or some such place. Where he had learned the craft of magery, Prestimion supposed; all very fine, if that was what he desired for himself—but what was he doing here, in his mother’s little reading-gallery, for this private meeting between mother and son?

The Princess Therissa said, as he came in, “Prestimion, this is Galbifond. I told you of him: our magus, who is so helpful to us these days.”

“I recall him from olden times. He was a picker of grapes then, I think.”

Galbifond bowed gravely. “The prince’s recollection is extremely acute. That is indeed what I was.”

“And now moved up somewhat higher in the world. Well, good for you: a man should strive to improve his place.” Prestimion glanced toward his mother. “I see you’re even more deeply given to sorcerous matters than I supposed. These great books here are full of spells, are they? The late Pontifex collected such texts also. They lay all around him in his final bedroom.”

The princess said, “You would find them instructive reading, Prestimion, if only you took the trouble to look into them. But we can discuss that another time. Tell me: you are determined to go to the Castle, is that correct?”

“Yes, Mother, I am determined.”

“Do you see no risk in it?”

“There’s risk in sauntering down a pretty garden path beneath a sambon-tree that’s laden with ripe cones ready to drop. But that doesn’t make us go helmeted through the garden. Svor opposes going to the Castle on the grounds that we’ll be walking into a trap, and Svor’s often right about such things, but nevertheless I mean to overrule him here. I do mean to go, Mother. It seems the politic thing to do, to be cordial to Korsibar and not snap my fingers in his face. Do you disagree? Does this wizard of yours have further discouragement for me?”

“See for yourself, and interpret it as you will,” said the Princess Therissa.

She nodded to the magus, who produced a broad plain white bowl and poured into it a pale fluid, a watery sort of stuff with a faint pink sheen. He put his hands to the rim of the bowl and said five short words in a language unknown to Prestimion, and then Prestimion’s own name, inflected in an archaic grammatical mode that made it sound unfamiliar even to Prestimion; and then he sprinkled a handful of some grayish powder into the pink fluid. It clouded over instantly, so that its surface became like slate.

“If you would look into it, excellence,” said the magus Galbifond.

Prestimion stared down into the smooth impenetrable surface. There was a stirring in it, and then a clearing; and suddenly he had a view, as though in a painting hanging on a wall, of a narrow valley, a sizable lake at its center, and armies running to and fro along its shores in great confusion, with the figures of dead and dying men lying scattered all about like so much litter. Everything was in wild disorder; it was impossible for him to make out details, to tell who was fighting against whom, or where the scene was taking place. But it was plainly a scene of terrible slaughter and murderous chaos.

Then the battlefield image faded and there appeared on the smooth surface of the fluid in the bowl a view of a bleak and forbidding gray landscape, empty, gritty, and drab, with distant hills standing far apart from one another, like isolated jagged teeth rising against the pale sky. That was all, gray against gray. There were no figures in view, no structures, only that awful desolate tract, delineated with marvelous sharpness of detail.

“Quite an impressive trick,” Prestimion said. “How do you do it?”

“Look closer, excellence. If you would.”

The focus had refined itself to dwell on a narrower segment of the same scene. The hills on the horizon were smaller now, farther away. He saw a sharper depiction of that barren land: reddish soil, a scattering of eroded wedge-shaped boulders like the skeletal remnants of a ruined city, a single lone tree with bare twisted limbs jutting away from the trunk in lunatic angles, as though they had been stuck on at random. A szambra-tree, it was. Trees of that sort, Prestimion knew, grew mainly in the Valmambra Desert of the north, a place where rain scarcely ever fell.

He looked closer yet, and saw a tiny figure trudging across that wasteland toward that single tree: a man nearly spent with fatigue, from the looks of him, one who was forcing himself onward in utter exhaustion, with a supreme effort. His face was not visible; but from the rear he seemed square-shouldered and sturdy, built somewhat low to the ground. His hair was golden and cut short. He wore a ragged jerkin and bedraggled leather leggings, and carried a pack on his back and a bow slung beside it.

“I think I know that man,” Prestimion said with a smile.

“As well you should, excellence,” Galbifond replied.

“And what am I doing in the Valmambra, then, wandering by myself? It’s an unkind place to go strolling in alone.”

“You have the look of a fugitive, I think,” said the Princess Therissa. “That desert is far to the north of here, on the other side of Castle Mount, and no one enters it willingly. You are fleeing, Prestimion.”

As he watched, the sky at the upper end of the bowl turned bloodred, and darkness began to fall, and great soaring birds of evil aspect came into view, coasting above him. The little man at the center of the image who was himself knelt down against some scraggly bush, as though settling in for the night. Then a second figure appeared, just a dot against the horizon, too small to make out clearly: but it seemed to Prestimion, from the lanky shape and attenuated limbs of him, that this might be Septach Melayn. He came closer; but just then the image went black, and Prestimion found himself staring at nothing at all, a bowl of blue-gray fluid rimmed round by a dull red glow, like that of a dying fire. And then even that was gone and he saw only gray.

“It’s a clever trick,” Prestimion said again. “I ask you once more, how are these pictures generated?”

Galbifond said, tapping the rim of the bowl, “I believe, excellence, that we behold you here traveling in the direction of Triggoin, which lies beyond the Valmambra. That city is where I learned the art of this bowl: you may learn it also, when you are in Triggoin.”

“I am supposed to inquire about how to go about gaining my lost crown too, when I am in Triggoin,” said Prestimion with a wry smile. “My friend Svor had that advice in a dream, that we should inquire into such matters in the city of Triggoin. So it seems from this vision and that one that I am surely bound for Triggoin, eh?”

“As a desperate fugitive,” said the Princess Therissa. “After some dreadful battle. This is the future that awaits you if you go to the Castle now. A wanderer in that miserable desert.”

“And if I don’t go? What future then for me, Galbifond?”

“Good prince, I can show you only what I can show you.”

“Indeed. This is the only future I have, is that it? Then I must follow along my path, I suppose.”

“Prestimion—”

“It’s all set down here for me, Mother, by the prophecies of your very own magus. There’s trouble coming, it seems: but even so, it would appear that I’ll survive my visit to Korsibar’s court, at any rate, because here I am well beyond the Mount, making my way out through the Valmambra. Heigh-ho! It’s settled, then. Off I go to the Castle, because I can be certain now that no harm will come to me there. One less thing to worry about. And afterward—afterward—” He looked toward his mother and smiled. “Well, afterward is afterward, eh? One thing at a time.”

3

The Lady Thismet’s private apartments at the Castle were close by the ones where her brother had resided in his days as a prince: just across the Pinitor Court from the innermost sector, looking down from the Vildivar Balconies on the long, narrow reflecting pool that had been built in Lord Siminave’s time. Here, amidst all the little luxuries that she had gathered in her busy life of self-indulgences—her velvet hangings and her cushions and divans covered in rare furs, her cases of rings and necklaces set with all manner of precious gems, and her wardrobes of the most costly gowns and cloaks and bonnets—Thismet waited for the Lady Melithyrrh to return. She had sent her lady-of-honor an hour before to bring Sanibak-Thastimoon to her; and Melithyrrh had not yet come back.

Then Melithyrrh appeared, alone, with high color blazing in her pale fair cheeks and her cool blue eyes aflame with anger.

“He will be with you presently, my lady,” she said.

“Presently? An hour’s wait, and he says only ‘presently’?”

“I sat a long while in his antechamber. They said he was holding a meeting, could not be troubled now. I sent word in that it was the Coronal’s sister who wished to trouble him, and they made me wait another endless span. And brought back a message to me finally that the magus was deeply pained to cause any distress for the Lady Thismet, but that he was engaged in a conference of the high sorcerers of the realm, and certain conjurations were under way that could not for any reason be interrupted, and he would be at your service in the first moment of his availability thereafter.” The Lady Melithyrrh’s eyes flared again with fury, and her bosom heaved. “Whereupon,” she continued, “I sent one message more, and was so bold as to say that the Lady Thismet was unaccustomed to being left in delay, and would speak sharply with the Coronal Lord her brother if the delay were to become any greater.”

“You did well,” Thismet said.

“This time I think I put some fear into him. At any rate, the person who was bearing these messages to and fro came back and said that I was to go inside, so I could see with my own eyes how serious a conjuration was under way. Which I did.”

“And was it a mighty working of spells, then?” Thismet asked.

“Of that, I have no knowledge to judge. But certainly it was a grand convocation. This was in Sanibak-Thastimoon’s own rooms, where he has all the peculiar devices and machineries of his craft arrayed on level upon level two stories high; and the air in there, my lady, was so thick with blue smoke and the reek of incense that I thought I would choke on it, and I carry it still in every fold of my gown. And what a crowd was in there! Fifty sorcerers, or I miss my count. There were two more of the Su-Suheris kind, and a whole pack of Vroons, and human ones also, those ones of Tidias that wear the tall brass hats, and some great hairy beast of a man bigger even than the Count Farholt, and uglier, and others besides, not only conjurers and diviners who had been in Lord Confalume’s court, but new ones, ones I had never seen before and never want to see again, all of them gathered around Sanibak-Thastimoon and chanting some recitation with their hands clasped together about the circle, and loudly crying out sudden strange words. ‘Bythois!’ they cried, and ‘Remmer!’ and such as that. And Sanibak-Thastimoon gestured to me as though to say, ‘Do you see, Lady Melithyrrh? This is serious business we are involved in here.’ So I left. But I have his promise that he will be with you presently, and that as quickly as he is able.”

“Well,” said Thismet, made a little uneasy by all that she had heard. “He’s never been slow to come to me before. I think of him as my special ally, Melithyrrh, the sharer of my inmost secrets. Has something changed, I wonder, now that Korsibar is king?”

“Perhaps not. Perhaps the Su-Suheris loves you as much as before, but was genuinely enmeshed in his wizardries just then, and it would truly have been perilous to break off. I hope so, for his sake and especially yours. Certainly it was a great outpouring of smoke and chanting in there, enough to let loose fifty score frightful demons upon the land, or to bring plague and drought to a dozen continents the size of Alhanroel.—But I must tell you, lady, I have never liked your Su-Suheris, nor any of these chanting mages, in fact. They frighten me. And he in particular seems cold and dangerous.”

“Cold, yes. His kind are all like that. But dangerous? He’s a friend to me, Melithyrrh. He serves me faithfully and guides me well, so far as I know. I have great trust in him.” There came a knocking just then at the door. “Here he is, I think. You see? He came as quickly as he could.”

Indeed, it was Sanibak-Thastimoon, who overflowed with apologies for his tardiness and begged the Lady Thismet’s forgiveness in a manner altogether unlike him in its abjectness. That made Thismet uncomfortable all in itself. He had been engaged, he said, in casting the great prognosis for the new reign’s first year, the grand oracle by which the Coronal’s policies would be framed. The Coronal’s entire staff of geo-mancers and seers had been employed in the task; it could not have been interrupted even for the Coronal himself, or great harm would have come to the realm.

“Very well,” Thismet said. “So be it: I’m not to take priority over such matters, I suppose. But are you free to talk awhile with me now, Sanibak-Thastimoon?”

“I am completely at your service, lady.”

’Tell me, then: do you remember the dream I had at the Labyrinth, of the two thrones in the throne room?”

“Of course.”

“The other day I saw Lord Korsibar go into that room—it was the first time he had been there, I think, since coming back to the Castle—and seat himself on the throne, as though to accustom himself to it. I went in after him. We spoke, for a bit, of his attaining the kingship, and what joy that was. Then I told him of my dream: the second throne, the one he had bade me ascend. He heard me out, but from his manner I saw he was hardly even pretending that my words had any importance. He made no comment at all, except to say that the dreaming mind dreams all sorts of things. I asked him, next, to let me sit on the throne myself; and he told me that was impossible, and we went out of the room. What do you make of this, Sanibak-Thastimoon?”

“Only the Coronal may sit on the Coronal’s throne, lady. That is a long-standing custom.”

“No one would have known but he and me. Korsibar and I are of one flesh, Sanibak-Thastimoon. We lived in our mother’s belly together, wrapped for nine months in each other’s arms. Surely he could have allowed—”

“It would have been a blasphemy. No doubt he would have liked to let you mount it; but he feared doing it, and for sufficient reason.”

“Yes. He did say it was blasphemous. Let that part of it pass, then. But what about his ignoring my dream of the second throne?”

“What about it, my lady?”

“Am I to have no power in the realm? Nothing’s been said to me about that, not a syllable, since our return from the Labyrinth. I am still the Lady Thismet, with no other rank or title; the difference simply is that I who was the Coronal’s daughter am now the next Coronal’s sister. But I am nothing and no one in my own right. Nor does the Coronal even seek my advice on matters of state these days, though he did so many times in the first few days after his ascent.” “Perhaps he will again.”

“No. He turns only to his men now. You told me long ago that I was marked for greatness, Sanibak-Thastimoon. You told me that again when you spoke my dream for me in the Labyrinth. What did that second throne in my dream mean, if not that some high post would be set aside for me?”

The Su-Suheris regarded her gravely, in that unreadable, emotionless way of all his race. “When I spoke your dream in the Labyrinth, lady, I cautioned you not to interpret it too literally. I said there is greatness involved in the making of a king, as well as in the being of one. Your brother would not be Coronal today but for your role in urging him onward. You and I both know that.”

“And that’s all I’m going to have? The knowledge that I’ve helped to put Korsibar on the throne, and nothing more? No power in my own hands? No post in the government? A life of continued idleness, only?”

“We discussed this in the Labyrinth, my lady. And you acted; and Korsibar is king.” The Su-Suheris looked at her blandly, almost indifferently. “I hardly know what to say, lady, more than that.” “You, at a loss for words!”

Sanibak-Thastimoon offered her a double smile that seemed freighted with irony, but nothing else.

“Help me, Sanibak-Thastimoon. I have a good mind; I have a powerful will; I am something other than a mere ornament. I feel that I deserve a place in this government. Help me make that come about.”

From him, now, the Su-Suheris shrug: the drawing of the slim forked neck downward upon the chest, the hooking of the six-fingered hands inward on the wrists. His eyes were four gleaming emeralds, as impenetrable as ever. “It is Korsibar that is king, not I, lady. He makes the appointments. What you ask is a radical departure from all custom and tradition.”

“Of course it is. But so is Korsibar’s coming to the throne. Speak to him. Tell him what I want. Advise him to grant it. You can do that, and he’ll listen. You and I are the people he listens to more than anyone in the world; but this is something that I can’t ask for myself, not directly. Do it for me. Will you do that, Sanibak-Thastimoon?”

“He is the Coronal Lord, my lady. I can ask, but I can’t promise that he will agree.”

“Ask, at least,” she said. “Ask.”

He went out.

To Melithyrrh, Thismet said, “You heard it all. What do you think? Will he help me?”

“This is your special ally, you said? The sharer of your inmost secrets? He shares your secrets, yes: he knows everyone’s secrets. But an ally? I think not, lady.”

“He said he would speak with Korsibar for me.”

“He said he would tell Lord Korsibar what you wanted, that I concede. But I heard no pledge that he would advise Lord Korsibar to grant your request, or that he would do anything at all to bring it about.”

“He promised exactly that!”

“No, lady,” Melithyrrh said. “You wanted to hear him promise that, but I was listening also, and I heard nothing of that kind. He said he would ask. That was all: that he would ask. He also declared that what you desire goes against all custom and tradition. He’ll do nothing to help you, this ally of yours. Trust me on that.”

Thismet was silent a long while, replaying in her mind her conversation with the Su-Suheris, searching and failing to find the assurances that in fact she understood now were not there.

Then at last she said, beginning to pace now around the room, “What should I do, Melithyrrh?”

“There are other sorcerers. I think this one is lost to you: I think he is entirely Korsibar’s creature now that Korsibar is Coronal.”

“This is painful, if it’s so. I’ve thought of Sanibak-Thastimoon as being as loyal to me as he is to my brother.”

“That may have been the case once. But no longer, I think. His loyalty is with the Coronal. He’ll serve you also, yes, but not against Korsibar’s interests.” Melithyrrh was deep in thought a moment. “Do you know the Vroon, Thalnap Zelifor?”

“Prince Gonivaul’s wizard, you mean?”

“He’s been in Gonivaul’s service, yes. But the Grand Admiral is famed for his niggardly way with money. Thalnap Zelifor’s been sniffing about the Castle for a new patron for a long while now. Came to one of Korsibar’s people, Count Venta, I think; but was turned away, out of Venta’s dislike of Vroons. Came to me afterward, to ask if you’d hire him. But I sent him away also.”

“You never told me that.”

“Was of no importance, my lady. At that time you were deep in love with the wizardry of Sanibak-Thastimoon: why hire another? But now the case is altered. The Su-Suheris is merely a conduit, passing your secrets on to your brother: do you see that, lady?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps.” She picked up a handful of her rings, put them down, picked them up again. Her fingers closed tight about them.

Melithyrrh said, “In any conflict between the Coronal and the Coronal’s sister, Sanibak-Thastimoon will inevitably take the Coronal’s side. There is no other way for him. No appeal will sway him; no bribery will buy him. You need a wizard of your own, one who owes no loyalty elsewhere.”

“And you think this Vroon is the right one?”

“His abilities in the art are second to none, so it’s said. It isn’t only spells: who can say what value the casting of spells really has? But there’s more to sorcery than spells. The Vroons have powers of mind that exceed all others. They say he’s even built a sort of machine that allows him to see right into people’s souls. And apart from that, he knows everyone, has his nose everywhere.”

“Vroons have no noses,” said Thismet, laughing. “Only those horrible beaks.”

“You understand my meaning. I’ll go to him, if I may. Set forth your cause to him. Enlist him in your service, and offer him good enough pay so that he won’t be tempted to sell what he learns from you to Lord Korsibar. May I do that, lady?”

Thismet nodded. “Do it, yes. Hire him for me. Bring him to me straightaway. Oh, Melithyrrh, Melithyrrh, I want so much to be a queen!”

4

And now atop Castle Mount it was the third day of the joyous coronation festival. Feasting and celebration and the pleasures of the gaming-fields were the tasks of the moment for the knights and lords of the Castle.

The spirit of these games was entirely different from those that had lately been held in the Labyrinth while the old Pontifex was dying. Those games had taken place in the strange and dark and mysterious subterranean enclosure that was Pontifex Dizimaule’s Arena, at a time of worldwide tension and uneasiness; but these games of Lord Korsibar’s coronation were being staged on the broad sunny greensward of Vildivar Close, just below the Ninety-Nine Steps, where there was a splendid view of the topmost reaches of the Castle and the great, arching brilliant blue-green vault of the open sky beyond. And this was meant as a happy festival, a brave celebration of new beginnings instead of the marking of an end, with drums and trumpets and jugglers and tumblers and fireworks by night, and laughter and delight and good hot sunshine by day, and plenty of strong wine flowing all the while, both day and night.

A towering grandstand had been erected along three sides of the Close, with a splendid high seat for the Coronal Lord Korsibar in the front row at the center of everything, an imitation in lustrous gamandrus-wood of the Confalume Throne within. On the opposite side of the courtyard, facing it directly, was a second thronelike structure of equal height and grandeur for the use of the Pontifex Confalume, who had come to the Castle the day before from the Labyrinth to attend the coronation of his own son, as no Pontifex had ever done before him. And on the third side, the one to the left of the Coronal’s throne, was yet a third great seat, this one belonging to the newly installed Lady of the Isle of Dreams, the Coronal’s mother Roxivail, who had this very morning arrived from her tropical retreat on the isle of Shambettirantil in the Gulf of Stoien.

The Lady Roxivail had not been present at the Castle for more years than anyone could recall, nor had anyone ever expected to see her there again. But here she was now, a small, dark woman whose great beauty was still altogether untouched by the years, a magnificent figure in her extraordinary gown of dazzling white silk with flaring sleeves and trim of deepest purple, to whom all eyes were magnetically attracted. She sat with royal grace looking serenely out toward her royal husband and her royal son. The three Powers of the Realm gathered here this day, and all of the same family: who could have imagined such a thing?

Behind the seats of the Powers were those of their counsellors and aides: for Korsibar, his High Counsellor Duke Oljebbin, carried over from the old regime, and the senior peers Gonivaul and Serithorn as well, but also the new great men of the kingdom—Farquanor, Farholt, Mandrykarn, Navigorn, Count Venta of Haplior. The sorcerer Sanibak-Thastimoon was close by Korsibar too, whispering occasionally in his ear out of one mouth or the other, and several of the other sorcerers of the Castle staff.

A much smaller group of aides flanked the Pontifex Confalume, for he had been accompanied from the Labyrinth only by the venerable Orwic Sarped, who had been the late Pontifex Prankipin’s Minister of External Affairs and for the moment was still in that office, and by the iron-faced Heszmon Gorse of Triggoin, who for many years had been Confalume’s chief magus. No replacement yet had been named for Kai Kanamat, the High Spokesman of the Pontificate under Prankipin, who had resigned his post the day after Prankipin’s death, or for most of the other high Pontifical officials of the previous regime. Rumor at the Castle had it that Confalume was trying to persuade Duke Oljebbin to transfer himself to the Labyrinth and become his High Spokesman, but that Oljebbin had thus far resisted the invitation.

As for the Lady Roxivail, no one had accompanied her who had any connection with the administration of the Isle of Sleep. Only her own ladies-of-honor and mages sat beside her. There had not been time for her to make the journey to the Isle and accept the reins of power from the outgoing Lady Kunigarda, nor to designate hierarchs from the Lady’s staff to take part with her in the coronation ceremonies.

Indeed, much was being whispered about whether the Lady Kunigarda would gracefully surrender those reins at all, which she had held so long. The hierarch Marcatain, who had been her representative at the Labyrinth for the funeral ceremonies of Prankipin, had returned to the Isle immediately upon Prankipin’s death, instead of going up to the Castle for the coronation of Korsibar. That was taken by some as a sign that the Lady Kunigarda did not plan to recognize Korsibar’s accession to the throne, nor would she give up her own Ladyship to a successor whose appointment she regarded as illegitimate. But there had been no public statements concerning any of this.

Various other great nobles of the realm and intimates of the new Coronal had choice seats not far from the three Powers and their immediate staffs: Duke Kanteverel of Bailemoona, Earl Kamba of Mazadone, Count Iram of Normork, Dembitave of Tidias, Fisiolo of Stee, Prince Thaszthasz who governed in rainy Kajith Kabulon, and many another.

Among this group, too, was the Lady Thismet, who had sat through the first two days of the festival with a notably glum expression on her lovely face, one that had not gone unremarked by the more keenly perceptive onlookers. Her lady-of-honor Melithyrrh sat to one side of her, and Thalnap Zelifor, the little Vroon wizard newly hired into her service, sat on the other, and she said almost nothing to anyone else, nor smiled nor seemed in any way gracious, even when Lord Korsibar himself came by, radiant with his new regal glory, to offer her a bowl of shimmering golden wine. “You would think,” said Kanteverel of Bailemoona to Kamba of Mazadone, “that Prestimion had become Coronal and not Korsibar, the way Thismet’s sulking!”

“Perhaps she wanted a grander seat,” Earl Kamba said. “There’s her brother high up on a nice throne, and her father has one too, and her mother, even: but she is sitting with the ordinary ruck of dukes and princes like all the rest of us.”

“The other three are Powers of the Realm,” Duke Dembitave of Tidias pointed out. “What’s she compared to that? A princess only, and that only by courtesy of her father’s rank.”

“What I think,” said the blunt and always irreverent Count Fisiolo of Stee, “is that what’s bothering her is the way her mother looks. Roxivail was last seen around here—what?—twenty years ago. Thismet probably figured she must be a withered old hag by now, no competition at all. And then she shows up, and she looks more like Thismet’s sister than her mother, and she’s wearing a fancier dress than Thismet besides.”

And they all laughed, for the Lady Thismet’s vanity was well-known to every one of them.

At one remove farther from the central area were the seats reserved for high municipal officials. The mayors of most of the Fifty Cities of the Mount were there, and those of some of the more distant cities, ones in the Glayge Valley and the Stoienzar Peninsula. But the outermost cities of Alhanroel—such places as Sefarad and Alaisor, Michimang, Bizfern, and all those on the far side of Mount Zygnor—were only sparsely represented, and of the immense population of the great metropolises of far-off Zimroel, there were no representatives at all; the coronation had been announced so swiftly that there was no way for anyone from the western continent to reach the Castle in time.

Missing also from the coronation festivities were Dantirya Sambail, who was said to be on his way to Ni-moya bearing official word that a new government had taken power, and Prince Prestimion of Muldemar, who had been invited but had not yet appeared. On this the third day of the celebration, just as the games of hammer-toss and hoop-hurdling had ended and the field was being made ready for the first jousting, Farquanor went clambering up to the Coronal’s high seat and said to Korsibar, “He’s here at last, with his three friends. Arrived an hour ago; went straight to his old apartments.”

“Does he know the games are in progress?” “He does, my lord. He is planning to be in attendance soon.” “Send a formal escort for him. Guard of honor, banners, princely regalia, everything. And clear a seat for him, for the four of them, close by us.” Korsibar glanced around to his left. “There. Those seats are open, just beyond Venta and Mandrykarn. Put them there.” “That is Kanteverel’s seat, lordship, and Thaszthasz’s, I think.” “Sit them somewhere else today, if they show up. Prestimion’s to be treated with soft gloves, do you understand? An honored guest. Every courtesy.”

Farquanor saluted and left. Not long after, a stir in the crowd signaled the appearance at the gateway to the games field of Prince Prestimion, flanked by Gialaurys and Septach Melayn, with Duke Svor a short distance to the rear. All four were distinctively clad for this special occasion, Prestimion in golden leggings tight as scabbards and an ivory jacket worked with silver threads, over which he wore an open cloak of purple velvet. The other three were nearly as splendid. An escort of a dozen strapping men of the Coronal’s guard, five of them Skandars and the rest human, formed a living wall about them as they marched onto the field and were shown to the seats that Farquanor had set aside for them.

Korsibar leaned forward and across the frame of his thronelike chair, smiling jovially, waving to Prestimion, calling out to him as to his dearest friend, telling him how pleased he was to see him here this day, how much he had regretted the absence of Prestimion’s company on the first two days of the game.

Prestimion replied with a cool formal smile and a few words of gratitude for the welcome he had received. He offered Korsibar no star-bursts.

Korsibar made note of that. He made note also that his sister, in her place across the way, was staring at Prestimion with terrible strange intensity, as though he were some demon incarnate who had materialized just now for the sole purpose of blighting the coronation festivities. She sat forward in her seat, her gaze fixed, jaw set, shoulders hunched rigidly. It was as if she had eyes for Prestimion alone, no one but Prestimion.

Three jousting contests had been scheduled for that afternoon: Kovac Derocha of Normork and Belditan of Gimkandale against Yegan of Low Morpin and Duke Oljebbin’s middle son, Alexiar of Stolen; and then two young brothers, counts of the Mavestoi line, contending with the grizzled old Duke of Sisivondal and his son; and after them a bout pitting Lethmon Yearlock of Sterinmor and his formidable one-eyed brother Grayven against unruly Viscount Edgan of Guand and his kinsman Warghan Blais, the Laureate Master of the Twelve Lakes. Kovac Derocha and Belditan had already come out onto the field on their mounts and were going up and down to accustom themselves to the animals, and Yegan and Alexiar could be seen at the paddock, getting ready to emerge.

But then the ponderous figure of Count Farholt came between Korsibar and the sunlight, and the huge man said, “My lord, I have a request to make.”

“Make it, then.”

“Gialaurys is here. I challenge him to single combat.”

There was a wild look of fierce bloodthirsty murderousness on Farholt’s face. Korsibar, his mind hearkening back to that grim wrestling-match in the Labyrinth, said, glowering, “These are happy celebrations, Farholt, not occasions for blood-vengeance. We’ll have no unseemly gore spilled on this field today.”

“My lord, I want only to—”

“No. We forbid it.”

Farholt, his eyes burning with rage, turned to Sanibak-Thastimoon, who sat nearby, and cried, “I beg you, reason with him, my lord magus! He denies me out of hand, and why? Gialaurys is my enemy. I ask for him.”

“The Coronal Lord has spoken,” said the Su-Suheris dispassionately. “You may not do it, then.”

“Why? Why?” Farholt’s face had reddened. He sputtered and spat. “Here’s a chance for us to be rid of that ape for good! Let me have him! Let me, my lord!”

“There will be no carnage here today,” replied Korsibar, letting his annoyance now become more apparent. “Sit down, Farholt.”

Sanibak-Thastimoon said, when Farholt had gone off still grumbling to his place, “You did well, lordship. No one wants to see those two face each other again so soon. But he’s right that Gialaurys is an enemy, and not only Farholt’s enemy. There’s danger in that one for our entire cause.”

“Danger? How so? All goes well for us here.”

“At the moment. But Gialaurys is far more warlike than his master. He seethes with resentment over the taking of the crown; and has the capacity to stir Prestimion’s anger, and perhaps to drive him one day into rebellion even. Let me deal with him, my lord.”

“What have you in mind?”

“Single combat’s the way, as Farholt says. We can rid us of him most innocently. There can be accidents in a joust, that look not at all like murder.”

“You heard me say no carnage here today!”

“Not at Farholt’s hand, no. Would look like open war, Farholt to strike down Prestimion’s man before Prestimion’s eyes, after what passed between Farholt and Gialaurys at the Labyrinth. But I have a man will do the work, and make it look all accidental, and no one the wiser.” Sanibak-Thastimoon indicated a magus sitting with the group of sorcerers near the front railing of the stands, a man of Zimroel, Gebel Thibek by name, big and long-limbed and sturdy, but not known to Korsibar as a sporting man in any way.

Frowning, Korsibar said, “Him? That’s no jouster there, that’s one of your mages! Gialaurys will throw him halfway to Suvrael with one swipe of his lance.”

“He has his skills, my lord.”

Korsibar contemplated the tips of his fingers. “Is this wise, Sanibak-Thastimoon?”

“Your situation is more precarious than you realize, my lord. And this Gialaurys is one great reason for that. Allow me to remove him.”

On the field, the first match had begun. Korsibar hesitated a long while, giving his attention outwardly to the contestants before him, observing Kovac Derocha and Yegan of Low Morpin circling one another on their frisking mounts, and Belditan of Gimkandale touching lances testingly with Alexiar of Stoien. Then he looked up at the Su-Suheris. “Whatever you think is best,” he said.

The unscheduled bout of single combat was inserted into the day’s program in the third position, following the contest between the two Mavestoi counts and the father and son pair from Sisivondal. Gialaurys, taken by surprise by the challenge from a man he did not know, and not in any way garbed for jousting just now, needed time to return to his quarters for the proper costume. But he accepted the invitation readily enough, practically in the same breath as it was offered. To Prestimion, who expressed some uneasiness over the suddenness and unexpectedness of all this, Gialaurys said, “I’ve been idle long enough, my friend. Here’s a chance to show all these Korsibar-loving folk that I know which end of the lance to hold.”

He went off to change, and to select a mount from the royal stables and test a few weapons for strength and balance.

The first contest still was under way. Kovac Derocha of Normork had unseated his man, and stood to one side, waiting for the outcome of the bout between Belditan and Alexiar. If Belditan should fall, Kovac Derocha would take on Alexiar. But it looked as though neither man was capable of throwing the other. Five times they came down the field toward one another, and five times they clashed lances and went lurching onward, still atop their mounts. It was not a pretty display. Prestimion, growing restless, left his place and went across to speak with a few of the lords he had not seen since the Labyrinth, Kamba and Fisiolo and some others.

Duke Svor, remaining in his seat next to Septach Melayn, turned to him and said, “This challenge troubles me.”

“And me also. Who is this Gebel Thibek? He was sitting among the mages before he came up here to challenge Gialaurys.”

“A magus is what he is, my friend. I know of him: one of Sanibak-Thastimoon’s following.”

“I thought we jousted only with men of breeding here.”

“A highborn magus, then, perhaps,” said Svor. “If there be such a thing. But it’s not this man’s ancestry that troubles me. It’s his skill.”

“There’s none better at jousting than Gialaurys.”

“I’m not speaking of skill at jousting.”

“Ah,” said Septach Melayn. “You think there’s treachery here?”

Svor’s eyes took on a sly brightness. “We are among honorable folk, are we not? But it’s always good to be ready for the unexpected.” And Septach Melayn nodded his agreement to that, and smiled, and sat forward on his seat.

Prestimion returned a moment later. He seemed easier of mood than he had been a little while before. “All the talk is of Roxivail and Thismet over there,” he said, settling into his seat. “How lovely the Lady Roxivail looks, and what a sour face the Lady Thismet is wearing today.”

“She has a good magus, the Lady Roxivail does,” Septach Melayn said with a wink. “Beauty such as that at an age such as hers comes out of the conjurer’s bag of tricks, wouldn’t you say? Why, she’s forty, at least. Forty-five, even.”

“Somewhat more than that, I hear,” said Svor. “But she’s had nothing to do, all those years down in sultry Shambettirantil, other than to take the beauty-waters and bathe in the shining beauty-mud and, yes, I suppose, have spells of juvenescence said over her day and night.” Svor laughed somberly. “I can imagine the dreams she’ll bring when she takes over as Lady of the Isle! A face like that, stealing into your sleeping soul. Those eyes—that wanton smile—”

“And then behold the daughter,” Prestimion said. “That angry glare of Thismet’s! How it twists and distorts her face! The way she stares and stares, as if she can’t forgive her mother for looking that way. Or for being here at all, I suppose. But what did they think, when they stole the crown for Korsibar? Roxivail would be Lady of the Isle then, and would have to come forth from her own little distant island: did that not occur to them?”

“It seems to me,” said Septach Melayn, “that the Lady Thismet has mainly been looking toward you, Prestimion, and not to her mother at all. See, she’s staring this way now! And not with a loving face, no, not loving at all, eh, Prestimion? A troublesome woman, with troublesome thoughts behind that pretty brow.”

A little roughly Prestimion said, “Does she fear I’ll reach across and snatch the crown from her beloved brother’s head as we all sit here? Not that the thought hasn’t crossed my mind, but—ah, look, here’s Gialaurys, now!”

The big man, clad in a jousting costume, came riding out on the field just then astride a racing-mount so spirited and fierce that it seemed more like a fire-breathing demon than any sort of beast of burden. Its legs were long and slender, its narrow back was razor-sharp; its sleek hide was a bright purple verging on red, and its yellow red-rimmed eyes were devilish ferocious ones. Behind him rode the magus Gebel Thibek on a sturdy-looking but far less fiery steed, one better suited, perhaps, for a long journey over difficult country than for the rapid charges and reversals of a joust.

Gialaurys seemed to have the measure of his animal, though any lesser mountsman would very likely have been thrown in his first moments. He sat with confidence toward the front of the natural saddle that interrupted the mount’s narrow spinal ridge, his legs dug deep into its barrel of ribs, and he held himself upright, balanced well, with his long lance resting lightly in the crook of his arm. The mount, though plainly indignant at being ridden at all, seemed to recognize Gialaurys’s mastery and to give him some respect for it.

Whoever had raised this animal had bred a fiendish one of volcanic energy and hair-trigger temperament. Racing-mounts, like the slower, stockier breeds of their species used for ordinary transportation and hauling, were artificial creatures designed for human convenience long ago, through usage of ancient science not very different from witchcraft and now wholly forgotten. Though the art of making them was lost, such synthetic things as mounts were able to perpetuate themselves through normal reproduction, as natural animals do, and various types had arisen by selective breeding. Of these the racing-mount was the finest kind, reserved entirely for the use of the lordlings of Castle Mount. But there could not have been many capable of handling this one.

Gialaurys and Gebel Thibek faced each other from opposite sides of the field, saluted, and swept forward on their first charge. The speed of Gialaurys’s mount was so much greater than that of the other man’s that they came together nearly two-thirds of the way down toward Gebel Thibek’s end of the field. As was customary, they offered no attack on this first pass, merely touching lance-tips and continuing on. But then both men spun about; as they made their return passes Gialaurys raised his lance in his familiar pattern of thrust; his mount was moving so swiftly that all its hooves seemed to travel off the ground at once. Gebel Thibek, waiting for the attack, appeared slow and uncertain, and held his lance clumsily, its sharp tip drooping.

“Here it comes,” Prestimion said. “Thrust and overthrow.”

But no. Gialaurys brought his powerful lance forward and down, aiming it at the dark circle at the center of Gebel Thibek’s padded leather jerkin. And then something miscarried: at the last instant Gebel Thibek brought his own lance up in a surprising parry, sliding it smoothly along the shaft of Gialaurys’s and deflecting it so that it went harmlessly past him.

“How was that possible?” Septach Melayn asked, astonished. “Is there some sorcery at work here?”

“Unexpected skill, I’d say,” replied Prestimion. “The man’s no petty jouster. I wonder why we’ve never heard of him.”

Another pass was already under way. Once more Gialaurys guided his mount with supreme effectiveness; once more Gebel Thibek’s defensive movements appeared awkward and inept. And yet when the two men came together, this time in midfield, Gialaurys’s lance wavered strangely in its thrust and his opponent brushed it easily aside with a loud contemptuous thwack that brought cheers from the men about Korsibar and gasps of amazement from Prestimion and Septach Melayn.

“Something is very much amiss here,” Prestimion murmured.

Indeed there was. Gialaurys was sitting oddly now, canted off to one side, dangling nearly halfway out of his saddle. He held his lance much too far down its handle, as though he had never held one before. And he had surrendered some of his control over his high-spirited mount, which was cantering about in finicky strides as if thinking of attempting to throw its rider.

“He carries himself like a drunken man suddenly,” Septach Melayn said.

“Not Gialaurys,” said Prestimion. “He would never have gone out there with wine in him.”

“It’s not wine that does this to him,” said Svor. “Do you see, below the helmet, the magus’s lips are moving? He’s speaking to Gialaurys. Weaving some spell perhaps? Why did they send a magus to challenge him, and not someone like Farholt, unless they planned to use spells?”

Gialaurys now was riding away, back to his end of the field—badly, drunkenly. He looked like a buffoon, as he had never been seen to look before. From the grandstand on the other side the sound of raucous jeering could be heard. Gebel Thibik, taking his place in midfield, called out Gialaurys’s name three times, and three times jabbed his lance toward him in the air, the signal for his opponent to turn and charge. It was apparent that Gialaurys was struggling with his mount, trying to swing it about, and finally succeeding.

Once more they rode toward each other. Gialaurys shook his head as if to free it from a shrouding of mist. He barely managed to parry Gebel Thibek’s thrust, which was heading for his heart: he offered none of his own.

Those lances came to sharp points. A blow in the wrong place, or one not properly parried, could be fatal. And Gialaurys seemed suddenly incapable of defending himself. His condition was worsening steadily: he had no grip on himself. Another moment and he would topple to the ground without even being struck, from the way things looked.

Prestimion began to rise. “This has to be stopped,” he said, looking across to Navigorn, who was Master of the Games today, and signaling for his attention. “Gialaurys is in no shape for this match.” But Navigorn was looking the other way.

Duke Svor’s hand caught Prestimion’s wrist.

“Look there,” he said.

Septach Melayn, in three quick leaps, had descended from the grandstand and was down on the field, roaring and staggering about like a man who has drunk six flasks of wine in five minutes and hopes to find a seventh. His sword was out; he was waving it wildly about. The crowd began to yell.

At the sight of that bare steel shaft, Gialaurys’s mount balked and reared, all but throwing him. His lance fell from his grasp but he hung on somehow to the mount’s heavy mane as the high-strung animal ran frantically to and fro. Gebel Thibek’s more stolid steed held its ground. The magus called out angrily to Septach Melayn to quit the field, to which Septach Melayn replied with coarse drunken insults and a lunging thrust of his sword through the empty air. Gebel Thibek responded with a powerful jab of his lance, one plainly meant not to warn but to kill. If Septach Melayn had not leaped aside with the utmost agility, he would have been skewered through the breast.

“What?” Septach Melayn cried, thick-voiced, still capering like one who has lost his senses. “Is this a demon here atop this mount? Yes! Yes, a demon!” He snatched up Gialaurys’s fallen lance and swung it in a wide lateral circle, catching Gebel Thibek under one arm and knocking him to the ground. “A demon!” Septach Melayn cried again. “It must be exorcised!” The sorcerer, rising uncertainly to his feet, backed away from him, making signs and incantations against him. But Septach Melayn, grinning like a madman, came running forward in quick hopping skips and without breaking stride put his sword through Gebel Thibek’s middle so that it jutted forth six inches out of his back.

A great shout of amazement and horror went up. Guardsmen began to run out on the field. Septach Melayn, reeling back and still moving spraddle-legged like a drunkard, looked down wide-eyed at his sword and his sword-arm as though they had struck Gebel Thibek down of their own accord. He made his way through the confusion on the field and, reaching the side of the grandstand, cried out, looking up at Korsibar, “My lord! My lord, it was an accident—forgive me, my lord, I thought this man was some demon putting an enchantment on my friend—”

Then Prestimion was on the field beside him, with his arm thrown over Septach Melayn’s shoulders, leading him off. “The filthy wizard!” Septach Melayn muttered, speaking into Prestimion’s ear alone, and no drunkenness in his tone now. “Another moment and he’d have put that weapon of his right through Gialaurys, as I did with him!”

“Come. Hurry,” Prestimion said.

And he too looked up at Korsibar, whose face was stern and grim and black with anger. Prestimion managed to don an expression of shock and anguish. “My lord—how terrible this is—he’s had far too much wine, his mind is altogether in a fog. He had no idea what he was doing. All he saw was his friend in great peril, or so it seemed to him.”

“Forgive me!” Septach Melayn moaned again, in the most piteous quavering voice that anyone had ever heard from him. “I beg you, lord, forgive me! Forgive!”

5

Afterward, in Prestimion’s apartments, Gialaurys said furiously, “By the Lady, I should have killed him straightaway at that first pass, instead of politely touching lances with him. But I was not trained to do such slaughter in the name of sport, and how was I to know what scheme he had in mind? Though I learned soon enough, by the Lady! This was the wrestling-match of the Labyrinth all over again, only with a deadlier weapon than Farholt’s arms and hands, this time. When I approached him at the second pass, he was already whispering his spells at me. And then I thought, it is all over with me, my mind is clouding over and my strength is gone, I will perish here in front of everyone and they all will think I had forgotten all my skills since last I jousted. I would have killed him, if I could. But I was too much befogged by him.”

He was trembling and white-faced with anger. Prestimion handed him a flask of wine, and he drained it without bothering to pour any into a drinking-bowl, and tossed it aside.

Svor said, “To go up against a magus in a contest like that was madness. I should have warned you to refuse.”

“No one ever listens to your warnings, Svor,” said Septach Melayn lightly. “It is your fate. But at least that one will cast no spells on us tomorrow.”

“This was all of it madness,” Prestimion said darkly. “The accepting of the challenge and the killing of the magus both. You’re lucky not to be in the Castle dungeon tonight, Septach Melayn.”

“He gave me provocation, after all. Everyone saw that. He aimed the lance at me to kill, when I was only a silly drunkard disrupting the match. Who could deny it was self-defense when I struck him down?”

“You went out there intending to kill him,” Prestimion said.

“Yes. So I did. But he was there to kill Gialaurys. Would you have preferred that he had?”

Prestimion opened his mouth to reply, but no words came, and he closed it again.

Gialaurys said, “It would surely have been my death. He was chanting words at me, binding me in the grip of demons—I could barely see, it was all I could do to stay atop my mount—” He reached out for another flask of wine. “I knew I would die. But I couldn’t make myself run away. I felt no fear, only anger at having been gulled this way. It was their plan to kill me. If Septach Melayn hadn’t gone out to interfere, I’d be with the Source tonight.”

“Whose plan?” asked Prestimion sharply. “Korsibar’s, you think?”

Gialaurys shook his head. “You keep telling us he’s an honorable man. Steals the throne, yes, but a man of honor all the same. Well, then, he loves us all: let us say that. It was Sanibak-Thastimoon who sent the magus against me. And next, I vow, he’ll be trying his witchcraft against you.”

“Ah, just let him try!” Prestimion said, laughing.

“He will! Do you see how the Castle is full of sorcerers for these games? The smell of incense-smoke is everywhere, and wherever you turn someone’s chanting in a corridor. Did you not see that as we were coming in? He’s got half of Confalume’s mages still on his payroll, and all of his own, and new ones we’ve never seen before. This is to be a reign of wizardry, Prestimion! This vast host of sorcerers is here at the Castle to frighten and intimidate anyone who might say Korsibar’s not the legal king: and this was the first blow against the four of us, who are Korsibar’s known enemies. The next will be aimed at you, my friend. Let us get ourselves from here at once.”

“Go, then,” Prestimion said. “I won’t keep you, not any of you. You need not stay. But I must.”

“While spells are woven against your life?”

“Spells! What do I care about spells?” Prestimion cried. “Oh, Gialaurys, Gialaurys, must I coddle your foolishness forever? It’s all mere silly noise, these incantations. There are no demons! There is no witchcraft!”

“And what happened to me on the jousting field, then? What was that, a sudden sunstroke?”

“There’s such a thing as hypnotic illusion,” said Prestimion, “and that was what the magus worked against you. You were half ready to believe any words of his anyway: more than half ready. So he used your own credulity against you, and hypnotized you to make you feel feeble and confused.”

Gialaurys butted his clenched fists together and let his breath run from him in a sigh of frustration. “Call it hypnosis, call it magic—ah, what difference do the words make? He took control of my mind. As was their plan. Oh, Prestimion, you are so clever, and I am so dim of wit, or so Septach Melayn likes to tell me, and yet everything seems clear to me that you and he refuse to see. There is magic in this world, and it works, and you must believe that or die!”

“Must I, now?” said Prestimion calmly. “We have fought this battle before, you and I.”

Gialaurys closed his eyes and drew a deep breath or two. Then he said, more evenly, “Let it pass. Believe or not, as the spirit impels you. But grant me at least that we are in danger here. Why was Septach Melayn not arrested for killing a man on the jousting field? Not because it was in self-defense, but because Korsibar knew that he had sent the magus out there to murder me, and feared that in any investigation it would come out! I say again, we should quit this place tonight.”

“We are in no danger so long as we keep our wits about us,” said Prestimion stubbornly. “How can I leave here on the very first day of my arrival? The thing is not possible. I owe Korsibar the courtesy of attending these events: he is Coronal, however he came by it, and this is his coronation time, and I am a prince of his nobility. But I tell you once more: you need not stay, none of you.” He looked at each of them close and hard. “Go, if you like. Go.”

“Say it once more and there’ll be a brawl,” said Septach Melayn. “We came here with you. We’ll stay with you. At least I will, for one.—Gialaurys?”

“It would be wisest to go, I think. But I will stay, if you and Prestimion do.”

“And you, Svor?” Septach Melayn demanded.

The small man ran his hand carefully through the close-knit curls of his beard. “This place is unsafe for us, as I told you before we ever came, and as today’s events confirm. But we were none of us born to live forever. I’ll stay also, Prestimion, though not with much joy in the thought.”

The Lady Thismet and Thalnap Zelifor walked together on the terrace outside her rooms, where a golden view of the slopes below the Castle opened out magnificently to the east. The sky was mottled and cloud-strewn this day as the long afternoon gradually descended toward night, and dull thunder boomed faintly somewhere downslope, where a storm must be going on above one of the Guardian Cities, or even farther below. Here, though, the air was mild and untroubled. Thismet strolled slowly, adjusting her pace to that of the diminutive Vroon, and now and again glanced down at the small creature as though he were some amusing pet trailing along at her ankles. But she knew he was something quite other than that.

She had told him everything. Now she depended on him to show her the proper path to follow. This hideous little alien thing no heavier than a mass of feathers, so tiny it could almost stand on the palm of her hand, with its horde of writhing little limbs and its ugly head and fierce little curving beak and those two huge yellow eyes whose pupils were eerie horizontal black stripes: her mentor now, her only savior.

“You’ve looked at the horoscope I had from Sanibak-Thastimoon?” she asked.

“Not only looked at it, but studied it top and bottom and sideways. Not only did that, but cast the runes for you myself, from the numbers you gave me.”

“And?”

’Total confirmation. He is a superb craftsman, is Sanibak-Thastimoon. There’s no one finer exists anywhere, dealing in such arts as these.”

“Would that I still trusted him. I trusted him once, more than anyone in the world. But that was folly. He was my brother’s minion always, and gave me only such scraps from Korsibar’s table as would not be missed, out of courtesy to me perhaps, but never out of any sort of loyalty. You are the only one I trust, Thalnap Zelifor. You and the Lady Melithyrrh.” Her eyes grew very bright. “Total confirmation, is it? He said a great destiny awaited me. And you found the same?”

“Look you,” he said. He flung half a dozen of his myriad tentacles upward to encircle his head, and swept them swiftly about in a pattern too intricate for her eye to follow; and suddenly, somehow, there sprang into being in the air before them a brilliant show of colored light, intense pulsing greens and deep throbbing violets and sharp spearing reds, with dazzling lines of black and yellow cutting across this background tapestry like comets lancing through the firmament. It could have been a map of some undiscovered continent. “Here is your chart, lady, and your line is the yellow. And this is Lord Korsibar’s destiny-line, the black one. See, see, how they rise from the same point, your line and his: for you and he were womb-mates, and that links you forever in these findings. Here, you see, in this region where the lines twist and turn around each other and go both of them only in a straight path, this is your happy childhood and his, the long sweet idle times at the Castle, the pampered days of the indolent young prince and princess—pardon me for the ugly word, milady, but it is so, there is no getting about that, and I must be utterly honest with you or what value is there to my service? Indolent is what you were. Begging your forgiveness for saying so.”

“Spare me politeness,” said Thismet. “I prefer truth.” Her eyes were already racing ahead, seeking to know the trajectory of those yellow and black lines, but the pattern was confusing to her: it needed a magus to speak it, she realized.

“Now follow here,” he said. “And here, and here, and here. Your lines, which have been flat, now begin to rise. The Pontifex sickens. Your father must ascend to the senior throne. Prestimion will be Coronal. But no, no, your destiny-line and Korsibar’s will not permit that. It is his time at last, and yours. See, here, you and he rise steadily day by day, and your line lies just beneath his, supporting his, thrusting him higher—”

“As indeed I did, when I put the idea of taking the crown into his mind.”

“Yes. Yes. And here he is, trending ever upward, Coronal Lord of Majipoor.” The black line, thicker now, rose like a skyrocket toward the heavens in a sudden spike, stark against the shimmer of red and green behind it in the air.

“And my line? Where has that gone?” She searched desperately; but all was confusion and swirls of color. “I saw it just a moment ago, the yellow, but now—now—”

“Ah, milady. At this edge of the chart we stand at what we call in our profession a nexus, a juncture of possible futures where nothing is certain, for opposing pulls are strong and outcomes are subject to the taking of great decisions that still are held in abeyance.”

“I paid you well,” said Thismet coldly, “to give me certainties, not junctures of possibility.”

She peered down at him. There was a savage pounding behind her temples; her fingers and toes were cold, and the muscles of her lips and cheeks ached from all the scowling she had done of late. This had not been an easy time for her, these first weeks back at the Castle, when she had hoped only for triumph and joy.

Had it been a mistake, investing so much faith in this new wizard? He had not given much satisfaction to his previous employers, had he? And now she had fastened on him as though he and he alone held the key to all the mysteries of the universe.

“Lady, lady, lady,” the Vroon said, with a flurry of his ropy limbs. “All depends on you! Here is your moment! Seize it!” He pointed to the muddled left-hand side of the chart, where Thismet could make out nothing comprehensible. “Everything is made plain here. The issue must be joined, and no more time can be wasted. From the moment of your conceptions, your destiny has been irretrievably entwined with his, and so it is shown here to continue for you and for him to the end of your days—unless you fail to take proper action now. Inaction will separate the lines.—You have told me that what you most truly want is a place of power in the realm.”

“Yes. That is my hope and desire. Now tell me this, if you can: If my line is entwined with his, as you say—and Sanibak-Thastimoon said the same—then why is it that Korsibar is Coronal, and I—I am nothing at all?”

“You have no position just now perhaps. But are meant for great things, lady, if only you reach out to seize them.”

“Yes, and what things are those? High Counsellor, perhaps? That’ll be Farquanor, I suppose. Member of the Council? Korsibar hasn’t said a word about that to me. He looks pained whenever I come near him these days. He knows I want something from him, and he seems resolved not to give it to me. But why? Why? I made him king. Don’t I deserve a reward?”

Thalnap Zelifor said, “Have you made any specific request of him, milady?”

“How can I? What am I supposed to ask for? I told him of the dream I had, the one of the two thrones, he and I sitting facing each other in the throne-room. He laughed and said it was just a dream, that all sorts of wild fantasies come to us in dreams. Then I sent word to him again, by way of Sanibak-Thastimoon, that I hoped for a place in the government. No answer came.”

“And what place was it that you asked for?”

“Why, no particular one. One that carried with it some power, that was all.”

“There is your error, lady. And that is why the chart has entered this zone of uncertainty.”

’Tell me, then, what demand I should have made.”

“You dreamed, you said, of a throne-room with two identical thrones in it. There you have your answer.” The Vroon was looking triumphantly upward at her, his bulging golden eyes bright with vehement assertion. “A joint reign! You and your brother, who shared space within your mother’s belly, must share the power of the government as Coronals together! What other meaning could your dream have had?”

Thismet’s mouth drooped open in astonishment. “Are you serious?”

“Are you, my lady?”

“When I told that dream to Sanibak-Thastimoon, he cautioned me against interpreting any dream literally. Now you tell me to take it precisely at its face value.”

“Yes. That I do.”

“There’s never been a joint Coronalship. There’s never been a woman on the throne.”

“There’s never been a son succeeding his father either, as I do understand.”

She gaped at him. In all her fantasies of power it had never occurred to her to seek to make that dream of hers come true to the letter. It had been enough merely to dare to imagine her brother as king; for herself, the most she had ever hoped for was some key post in his government, not—despite what she had seen in that dream—a throne of her own. It was lunacy to want that. Thus far Korsibar had ignored even her mildest hints for some place of authority. And this—this—

“Look at the chart, lady!” cried Thalnap Zelifor. She looked. Nothing made sense. It was only meaningless zigzagging lines. “There it all is, lying before you like a path paved with the stars of heaven! This is no moment for timidity. Go to him. Tell him of your true ambitions. Insist on their fulfillment, my lady. He is not a strong man, your brother. He can resist only up to a point; and then, when a stronger force presses against him, he capitulates. You know that, my lady.”

“Yes. I do. And I am a stronger force.”

“That you are, indeed. So go to him.”

Why not? Why not?

Her head was reeling. Lights and color swirled before her. The chart that the Vroon had conjured up in the air opened out and widened until it filled all the sky. She had said to Melithyrrh not long before that she wanted to be queen; but what had she meant by that? The word had simply leaped to her lips. Queen? There were no queens on Majipoor. But Coronal Lords were kings, and a Coronal who was a woman would be a queen, was that not so? Coronal in her own right, yes! Royal daughter of her royal father, royal sister of her royal brother, occupant of that second throne that would be built for her in her father’s wondrous throne-room.

Why not?

Why not?

Korsibar said, “You may come in, sister.”

He spread his hands against the great desk of red palisander that had been his father’s, and Lord Prankipin’s before that, and one king’s and another’s ever since this splendid official suite had been constructed for the Coronal’s use in the reign of that great builder Lord Dizimaule, and watched as Thismet entered, making her way in swift businesslike fashion toward him across the huge room, over the inlays of semotan-wood and bannikop and ghazyn with which the floor was decorated.

Then she stood before him, tiny and dangerous. She was always potentially explosive. His other half, his female self, his companion in the womb, beautiful, forceful, full of unfocused energies. She frightened him. She was a constant threat to him, now and ever. He was so very tired, after these hectic weeks and this nightmarish blundered thing of Septach Melayn and the magus, this terrible miscalculation, just the other day on the jousting field. And by the hard glitter of her dark eyes, the way she held her shoulders now, the jutting angle of her chin, he knew she had not come here simply to pass the time of day.

She had pushed him into becoming Coronal. What would she push him into now?

“You look awful, brother,” was how she began.

“Do I? Are you surprised? That ghastly mess? The killing right under our noses?”

“Why haven’t you had Septach Melayn arrested, then?”

“He was drunk. It was all an accident.”

“So he claimed, yes.”

“I believe him,” said Korsibar steadfastly. “What do you want, Thismet? In ten minutes Farquanor will be here with more papers for me to sign.”

’Ten minutes for your sister, is that all? Well, perhaps I can tell you what I have to tell you in that.” She gave him a look that he knew all too well, and said, after a pause that was only too eloquent, “The horoscope that Sanibak-Thastimoon cast for you, the one that said you would shake the world: were you aware that he cast a similar one for me, Korsibar?”

“Well, and why should it not be similar? We were born in the same hour. Nearly the same moment. The stars were in identical configuration when we were conceived. And you have shaken the world, sister. Your destiny is fulfilled in me.”

“In you.” Said very flatly.

He glanced at the crown, which lay next to him on the desk. He wore it less and less often these days. “I sit upon the Coronal’s throne, and it was your doing that put me there. But for your urging, your shrewd counsel, your confidence in the chances of my success, I would never have attempted it.”

“This fulfills your destiny, not mine. The runes of my future show me following your path.”

“And so you have. I am Coronal; you stand alongside me now as I take the governance of the world upon my shoulders.”

“Alongside you? A little distance behind you, I would say, Korsibar.”

He had feared something like this. But the exact direction of her drift was still uncertain.

“I pray you, Thismet, come to your point. I’ve already told you that Farquanor will be here any moment, and bringing a host of documents that must be—”

“I could deal with those documents,” she said.

“The Coronal’s sister has no authority to do such a thing.”

“My point exactly. You are king; I am nothing that I was not before.” Thismet leaned forward, resting her closed fists on the desk, thrusting her face aggressively toward his. “Thalnap Zelifor has cast my horoscope anew. It confirms the findings of Sanibak-Thastimoon. We follow identical trajectories, you and I. I was born for greatness in my own right, and this is my hour.” She paused a moment; and then astounding words burst from her: “Make me Coronal in joint reign with you, Korsibar.”

The blunt incredible request hit him with the force of a mace striking against his midsection.

This was worse than he had expected: worse even than he could have imagined. He felt her words with actual physical pain. “Can you be serious, Thismet?” he said, when he had regained his breath.

“You know that I am.”

“Yes,” he said leadenly. “Yes, I think I do.”

He stared at her, unable to find words.

A knock came at the door. The voice of his majordomo sounded from without. “My lord, it is my lord Farquanor for you!”

’Tell him to wait a moment!” Korsibar returned in a voice hoarse and strangled with perplexity and rage. Thismet waited motionless for his reply. Her eyes, implacable, gleamed like polished stone.

Slowly, holding himself tightly in check, he said after a time, “What you ask is no small request, sister. There’s no historical precedent for any such sharing of the throne.”

“I understand that. Many things have happened lately that have no historical precedent.”

“Yes. Yes. But for a prince to succeed his father as king is not wholly unnatural. For a woman to occupy the Coronal’s throne, though—”

’To share the Coronal’s throne.”

“Put it however you wish. It has never happened before.”

“I ask you to consider it. Would you do that?”

He was utterly amazed. Diplomatically, he said, “I would need a chance to explore the constitutional issues that may be involved, do you see? And to consult with grayer heads than mine or yours, and have their opinion concerning what sort of consequences in the world in general we could anticipate if we undertook such a move. The people have peacefully accepted my irregular coming to the throne, I think. But if I ask them now to go another step, and accept you also—”

“A very daring step, yes,” she said, and he was unable to tell whether there was irony in her tone.

“Let me have a little time, is all I ask. Time to study your request. To obtain wise advice.”

She gave him a long, cool, skeptical look.

He knew her well enough to realize that she was prepared to make a great nuisance of herself over this, or something worse than a nuisance, until she had her way. She knew him well enough, he suspected, to understand that his request for a reflective delay was very likely his way of refusing her. But for the moment it would be a standoff: he was sure of that.

“How much time, do you think, will you require for your constitutional researches?”

A shrug. “I don’t have any precise idea. This comes with great suddenness, Thismet, at a moment when I have Prestimion on my hands here with his situation unresolved, and also, I remind you, our mother and father both, and am still new to my crown besides, with all the challenges that that poses. But you have my word: I understand your need and I’ll give it the most careful consideration.”

There was a knocking again from the hallway—impatient now.

“A moment!” Korsibar bellowed, glaring at the door. “I am with the Lady Thismet!”

He looked toward her again. He still could hardly believe she had made this request of him. It seemed to him now that behind the beautiful mask of her face there lurked a demon’s intensity.

“We’ll talk further of this before long,” he promised her soothingly, summoning a warm smile from some deep reservoir of his soul. And added, at her frown: “We’ll do it soon. Very soon, Thismet. You have my word.”

“Yes,” she said. “So I do.”

She skewered him with one last penetrating look. Then she whirled about and quickly crossed the long room and was gone, nearly colliding with Farquanor as he entered. The little man carried a chin-high stack of papers so unwieldy that it was all he could do to manage a one-handed starburst over the top of them. “My lord—” he began.

“Put them down there,” said Korsibar. He closed his eyes for a moment and drew three deep breaths. Then he said, “The Vroon wizard, Thalnap Zelnifor—you know which one I mean, Farquanor?”

“Gonivaul’s man, I think.”

“Gonivaul’s no longer. He’s in my sister’s employ, and filling her ears with grotesque nonsense, of a sort which does neither her nor me any kind of good service. Have him arrested and detained. And take care of it quickly and quietly.”

“On what grounds, my lord?”

“A complaint has been filed against him, let us say, of practicing dark arts against innocent victims. No need to name the accuser. Just get him and lock him up in in the lower vaults and leave him there until I’ve had time to speak with him, and to explain to him how he can best correct his attitudes. Do it now, Farquanor. We can look at these papers afterward. Go. Now.”

6

Anger and fear and a rush of wild excitement coursed through Thismet as she made her way swiftly from her brother’s office. For better, for worse, she had made her throw of the dice. And now she must live with the consequences of her act.

No peace would be possible between Korsibar and her, she knew, until the issue was settled. That much was certain. The request, once made, could neither be withdrawn nor forgotten, only accepted or refused. He was aware that she was serious; the look of dismay and dread that had come over him as she voiced her demand had told her that much. He already understood what sort of adversary she could be.

But, she wondered, had she taken his new kingship too lightly into account? All her life and his, she had known how to have her way with Korsibar, for he could never refuse her anything: indeed, could rarely refuse anything to anyone who asked him sweetly enough, or firmly enough. Now, though, he was not simply her handsome but pliant brother Korsibar, but Coronal Lord of Majipoor.

The crown, Thismet had read, sometimes ennobled and exalted its wearer. There were old tales of what a lazy wastrel Prince Kanaba had been, until the Pontifex Havilbove picked him to be his Coronal and he instantly put aside his roistering ways and adopted the gravity of a king. And then there was Lord Siminave: also, supposedly, a drunkard and a gambler until the crown came to him, and then he was as stern and righteous as a monk forever after. Or Lord Kryphon, who was said to have been a weakling totally under the sway of his sinister friend Ferithrain until the day after his coronation, when without warning he exiled Ferithrain forever to Suvrael. Would Korsibar, too, find sudden unexpected strength of character now that he was king?

Pondering all these things, asking herself over and again whether she had damaged herself irreparably by launching this bold and maybe overbold assault on Korsibar’s sole possession of the royal authority, Thismet rushed in an agitated way through the Inner Castle, from Pinitor Court to silly Lord Arioc’s silly tower to her father’s garden-house, and from there downward along the Guadeloom Parapet to Vildivar Close, and up the Ninety-Nine Steps again and into the inner structure once more, past chapels and armories and courtyards and parade-grounds, until she found herself in front of one of the entrances to the enormous brick-walled library founded by Lord Stiamot that ran like a long coiling serpent back and forth through the core of the Castle from one side to the other and around and around again.

Any book that had ever been published on any civilized world was kept here; so they said. Shriveled old librarians who were little more than huge brains with dry sticks of withered limbs attached shuffled around all day long in there, dusting and arranging and pausing now and then to peer appreciatively at some choice obscure item of their own near-infinite collections.

The sign over the entrance proclaimed that this was the history section. Thismet had not set foot in any part of the library for years. Impulsively she rushed inside now, not knowing why, thinking perhaps to find an ancient chronicler’s neglected book of annals in which she would discover an account of a Coronal’s sister, thousands of years before, who had in some strange way come to be given a crown of her own. So hastily did she sweep through the doorway that she went crashing with a force that took her breath away into a short, sturdily built man who was leaving the building just as rapidly.

The impact, which she received against her shoulder and left breast, was severe enough to send her spinning around. A strong hand caught hold of her just as she was about to strike the vestibule wall, and steadied her.

She reached one hand toward the wall to help herself regain her balance. “Forgive me,” she said, still a little dazed. “I’m terribly sorry. I should have been paying attention to where I—”

Prestimion, it was. Trim and tidy in a well-cut close jacket of some soft white leather and pale green leggings trimmed with swirling strips of orange velour.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Just—a bit shaken—” she said.

He stood before her smiling pleasantly. The collision did not seem to have harmed him. Three books were clasped under his left arm and several more lay at his feet. Thismet offered him a brief uneasy smile of courtesy. Her breast ached where it had struck against him, and she wanted to rub it, but not in front of him. She began to go around him, but he held up one hand to stay her.

“Please. As long as we’ve run into each other like this. Can I have a word with you, Thismet?”

“Here? Now?”

“Please,” he said again. Smoothly, he scooped up his fallen books and in the same easy gesture stowed them with the others under his arm and offered his free arm to her. It was impossible for her to resist. She had for the moment exhausted all her ferocity in her confrontation with Korsibar. He led her within, and to one of the little cubicles where scholars sat poring over the tomes that they had requisitioned from the endless stacks that went tunneling down from here into the heart of the Castle Mount.

They sat opposite each other, with his little heap of books stacked up between them like a barricade. Thismet was intensely aware of Prestimion’s keen close-set greenish-blue eyes, his narrow face and thin determined lips, the great breadth of his shoulders. He would be more handsome, she thought, if his hair were glossier. But even so he was a handsome man. The thought surprised her, that she should think such a thing at all.

He said, “Are you angry with me over something, Thismet?”

“Angry? What makes you think that?”

“I saw you across the way, at the tournament, the other day. You were glaring. Your face was all drawn up in what I took to be fury. I thought it was your mother you were glaring at, but Septach Melayn maintained that that was not so, that you were looking at me.”

“He was wrong. I have no quarrel with you, Prestimion.”

“With your mother, is it, then?”

He said it with a light and merry smile. She tried to match it as she said, “My mother is a difficult woman, and it’s not easy for me, seeing her again after all these years. But no, no, I have no particular quarrel with her either. Or with anyone. I am at peace with the world. If I looked tense at Vildivar Close, Prestimion, it was on account of the jousting itself, my fear that someone would be hurt. I’ve never been able to find pleasure in watching these savage amusements you lords love so much.” It was an outright lie, every bit of it, and Prestimion’s brow flickered a bit, perhaps, at the sound of it; but she went smoothly onward. “If anything,” she said, “I would expect that you would be the one holding some anger toward me. Or toward my brother, at least. But you seem the soul of amiability.”

“You and I have always been good friends, haven’t we, Thismet?”

That was another lie, at least as far from the truth as hers. She met it with a demure smile, and even a blush.

He went on, speaking in the same good-natured way, “As for the ascent of Korsibar to the throne, well, I was as startled by that as everyone else, or perhaps a little more so. That I freely admit. But angry? Just as well be angry at the rain for getting you wet. It is done; it is the reality of things. Korsibar is our Coronal and I wish him long life and a happy reign. Who could want anything else for him?”

She allowed her smile to grow more sly.

“You feel no resentment at all, you say?”

“Disappointment would be a better term. You know I had hoped to be king.”

“Yes. Everyone knew that.”

“But things fell out otherwise for me, and so be it. There are other pleasures in life beyond sitting on a throne and issuing decrees, and I hope now to indulge in them.”

His gaze rested on her face in a disconcerting way. Once again, as had happened in the Labyrinth, she found herself stirred unexpectedly by desire for him.

That had infuriated and appalled her then; but then Prestimion had been the enemy, the rival. That was all behind them now. Even if she discounted two-thirds of what he had been telling her here, it still seemed to her that he had come gracefully to terms with his displacement. And she saw distinct signs that he was attracted to her as well. She found herself wondering what use she might be able to make out of that in her own struggle with Korsibar.

But even as she was thinking these things he rose and gathered his books under his arm again. “Well,” he said. “You’ve put my mind at ease. I would never want there to be unfriendliness between us, Thismet.”

“No,” she said, looking toward him as he left the cubicle. “By all means, let there be no unfriendliness between us.”

The majordomo said, “The Lady Roxivail your mother is here, Lord Korsibar.”

She was a startling sight. Delicate of build, small and dark and preternaturally beautiful, Roxivail was so much like Thismet that it might almost have been thought that she, and not her son Korsibar, was Thismet’s true twin. Her black curling hair had that same rich glossy sheen, her eyes the same diabolical sparkle. She entered Korsibar’s office clad in a short clinging robe of shining black satin subtly worked with purple figures, all ruffles and lace and beaded filigree-work, and a bodice cut down so deep that her breasts stood forth from it all but bare, high and round and firm like a girl’s. The sweet thick aroma of attar-of-funisar came from the hollow of her throat. She was tanned a deep rich color wherever her skin could be seen, as if she went naked half the day on her sunny isle of Shambettirantil.

Korsibar looked at her in astonishment.

“You should cover yourself before me, Mother.”

“Why? Am I so ugly?”

“You are my mother.”

“And must I dress in some particular fashion on that account? I’m not accustomed to dressing like an old woman, nor do I see any reason for matronly modesty before you. We are strangers to each other, Korsibar. You were a baby when I left this place. I feel very little like anyone’s mother.”

“Nevertheless, my mother is what you are. Cover yourself.”

“The sight of my body disturbs you? Forgive me, then,” she said with a coquettish smile. She knew she had unsettled him, and she was enjoying it.

Korsibar could see now why Lord Confalume had not greatly regretted her leaving of him.

He continued to stare coldly. The smile turned to an impish grin, and she drew a fold of satin down over her bosom. “I’ve come to say goodbye,” she said. “In two days’ time I leave to begin my journey to the Isle of the Lady. Where an ugly struggle awaits me, I think, with your aunt the Lady Kunigarda.”

“A struggle? For the Ladyship?”

“No messages of welcome have come from her. No emissaries from her staff offering to accompany me to the Isle. No mention of the instruction that must be given me if I am to perform the Lady’s functions. No indication of any sort that she recognizes you as Coronal, or that she intends to stand down from her post.”

“Ah,” said Korsibar. He had learned that already, the value to a king of that noncommittal ah.

“Of course, she’ll have to stand down, like it or not, once I’m there. You’re king and I’m your mother and the rules are the rules: the mother of the Coronal becomes Lady of the Isle, and that’s that. Still, I think there’ll be trouble first. She’s tough and stringy and hard, is Kunigarda, and gives nothing up easily. I remember her well from the old days.”

“If she refuses to yield to you,” said Korsibar, “I’ll send orders for her to give over.”

Roxivail laughed. It was a sharp-edged brittle laugh that grated on him like a file. “It is precisely because she doesn’t regard you as a legitimate Coronal that she’s not likely to turn the Ladyship over to me. Why, then, would an order from you make one twig’s bit of difference to her? But leave her to me, Korsibar. I’ll bring matters around to where they ought to be.”

“You actually want to be Lady of the Isle, then, Mother?”

She seemed taken by surprise by that. A moment went by before she said, “Yes! Of course I do! Why would you ask such a thing?”

He said, nonplussed, “You much preferred the comforts of your island in the Gulf, is what I had heard. Your lavish palace, your soft warm breezes and bright sunlight, your good life of luxury and idleness.”

“A palace and breezes and sunlight I can also have on the Isle of Dreams, and luxury too, if I want it. As for idleness, I’ve had enough of that for one lifetime.”

“Ah,” he said again.

“I never expected to be Lady of the Isle, you understand, or anything else, ever, but myself. Lord Confalume’s estranged wife is who I was. But what kind of identity is that? Known to the world only by the name of the man I once was married to? When I lived at the Castle I had nothing to do from dawn to dark, and little enough after that. And so it’s been for me in Shambettirantil too. Well, then, Korsibar, somehow you made yourself Coronal, and that makes me Lady of the Isle, for which I’m eternally grateful to you. At last I have a role to play in the world. Oh, I’m looking forward to the Ladyship, all right. Make no mistake on that, my son.”

“I see,” he said.

She was just like Thismet in spirit as well as body, then. A beautiful idle woman, too intelligent for her own good, hungry for power. Not that he had ever had any doubt of it, but plainly Roxivail was her daughter’s mother.

She said offhandedly, “How has Confalume taken all of this, by the way?”

“All of what?”

“This. You snatching the crown out of his hands and putting it on your own head when Prankipin died. That’s what you did, isn’t it? That’s what they’re saying, at any rate. We spoke, Confalume and I, just for a few minutes the other day: the first words that have passed between us in twenty years, I think. He seemed altogether changed. He’s like a shadow of the man I knew. All the stuffing’s gone from him. Is he sick, do you think?”

“His health is fine, as far as I know.”

“But he let you make yourself Coronal? He didn’t object at all? Prestimion was supposed to get it, from what I heard. Why didn’t Confalume speak out right then and there to prevent you from doing what you did?”

“It was already done,” said Korsibar. “There was a feeling among us—Thismet, Farquanor, some others, and I—that Prestimion wasn’t right for the throne, that he was too proud a man, too full of himself. And in some way not truly regal: he doesn’t hold himself apart from others, as I think a king must do. He mingles too readily with too many. And so I acted. And it happened so swiftly that Father could not or would not stop it. He let it be; and here we are.”

“ ‘Proud and full of himself.’ That’s how I’d describe your father too. I never liked Confalume, you know. I’m not talking about love, boy. I never even liked him. Stiff and pompous, so terribly conscious of what a great Coronal he was. Sleeping with him was like sleeping with the Stiamot Monument. So I woke up one morning not long after you and your sister were born, and I said to myself that there was no longer any reason to stay here, that I had little interest in rearing babies and even less in being the Coronal’s consort, and so I left.—But it astonishes me, all the same, that Confalume would have let you pull that trick of crowning yourself Coronal. He must be getting old.”

“He is not young,” said Korsibar solemnly. He glanced in a hopeful way toward the door, wishing someone would knock and interrupt this. But he had no appointments scheduled for the rest of the day. “Well, Mother—” he said.

“Don’t be afraid, I’ll be gone soon enough. I have just a few little words of motherly advice for you first.”

Korsibar smiled for the first time since she had entered the room. “Better late than never, is that it?”

“Perhaps motherly advice is the wrong term. Counsel of state might be more accurate. We are both Powers of the Realm now. This is political advice.”

“Very well.”

“First. Marry Thismet off as fast as you can. Give her to one of your good-looking young lords—that Navigorn, for example. Or your friend Mandrykarn, the one from Stee. Someone robust enough to satisfy her, and loyal enough to you that he won’t start intriguing against you the moment he’s married to the Coronal’s sister. You can’t let her stay single. Beautiful single women are restless creatures, and restless women make trouble. I should know, Korsibar.”

“Thismet’s restlessness has already begun to show,” Korsibar said. “I’ll take your advice under consideration, and I thank you for it.”

’Two,” she said. “Get rid of Prestimion.”

His head jerked about in surprise. “Get rid—”

“Absolutely. Don’t just banish him. See to it that he disappears permanently. There’s someone on your staff who’ll know how to do that, I assume.”

“Farquanor, I would think. Or Sanibak-Thastimoon. But Prestimion’s no danger! He seems to have accepted the loss of the crown very well indeed.”

“Has he?”

“Oh, he’s hurt, no question about that. But he’s a practical man, a realist. I’m king and I have the army behind me, and what can he do about it? He’s a decent clean-souled man. I’ve always thought of him as a friend.”

“A friend,” Roxivail repeated scornfully.

“Yes, a friend! What do you know, Mother? All these people are just names to you, but I’ve lived with them all my life. Surely Prestimion thinks he would have made the better Coronal: how could he not? But it’s over and done with. The throne has passed from Father to me, and Prestimion knows that that can’t be undone. I wouldn’t harm him, not for anything. I intend to offer him a high place in the government, in fact, to pacify him, to ease whatever resentments he’s still carrying around.”

“Get rid of him,” Roxivail said once more. “You can’t buy a man like that with a Council seat. He’s another proud one, another who’s swollen with himself. I knew his father: a proud man too, as bad as Confalume that way. Prestimion’s the same. If he’s been friendly to you lately, it’s only because he’s biding his time, waiting to make his move. I tell you, Korsibar, he won’t rest until he’s standing on top of your dead body trying your crown on for size. Have him killed.”

Korsibar shook his head. “I took the bad advice of the magus Sanibak-Thastimoon and we made an attempt at killing Prestimion’s friend Gialaurys on the jousting field. It couldn’t have worked out worse for us. I’m done with killing, Mother. Prestimion means me no harm; and I’ll do no harm to him.”

“Do as you please, then,” she said with a gesture of indifference. “But test him in some way, I would suggest, to see if he’s as benevolently inclined toward you as you imagine. And do it soon.”

“I’ll give that some thought.” He kneaded his knuckles together and wished her ten thousand miles away. “Do you have any further advice forme?”

“This is enough, I think. Come: get up from that desk, boy. Give your mother a farewell kiss.” Her eyes sparkled maliciously. She pressed herself tight against him as they embraced, wriggling a little, flattening her breasts against his chest. Her kiss was not a motherly one. He released her quickly; and quickly she was gone.

Prestimion said, “Another summons from Korsibar. This time to a private audience in the Confalume throne-room.”

“Concerning what?” asked Svor. He stood against the great outcurv-ing window of Prestimion’s suite in the Castle, a comfortable apartment in the building of white brick known as Munnerak Tower on the Castle’s eastern face, that was set aside for the residences of princes of Prestimion’s rank. It was mid-morning. Shafts of golden-green light streamed through the faceted glass behind him.

“Concerning the place he means to offer me in the government,” Prestimion replied. “This following on the discussion I had with him our last day in the Labyrinth, when he said I’d eventually be invited to hold a high place in his reign.”

“Be careful,” said Septach Melayn. “Favors from your enemy often have poison at their centers.”

“By which you mean what?” Prestimion asked.

“His goal is to compromise you, I suspect, by making you complicit in his capture of the crown. When you’ve been sitting there at his right hand in the Council-chamber for a time, giving your assent to his laws and decrees and appointments, and then one morning you rise up against him and call for his overthrow, you’ll look merely ungrateful and treasonous, an overly ambitious underling spitefully attacking his master.”

“Whereas if I continue to hold myself aloof from him, neither openly rebelling nor accepting any post from him, I maintain my distance from a regime that I intend in time to brand as unlawful. Yes. I see that. And what if he doesn’t permit me to maintain that distance?”

“How would he do that?” asked Septach Melayn.

“By taking the position,” said Svor before Prestimion could reply, “that anyone who isn’t with him is against him. Surely Farquanor will have put that idea in Korsibar’s head already: try to buy Prestimion’s loyalty by pulling him close with some important role in the government, and if Prestimion should refuse, interpreting that as a sign that Prestimion means sooner or later to make trouble. That’s the advice I would give Prestimion if the situations were reversed.”

“Yes,” said Septach Melayn, drawing the word out slowly. He held his dress-sword across his knee and was polishing its bright steel lightly with a strip of chamois. “Two peas of a pod, you and Count Farquanor. Put your beard on his face and I don’t see how we could tell the two of you apart.”

Gialaurys, who had been silent a long while, said to Prestimion now, “When is this audience with Korsibar to happen?”

’Today. An hour from now.”

“Just the two of you, you and he?”

“So far as I know.”

’Take a dagger, then,” said Gialaurys. “Stand there next to him, and listen close to all he tells you, and smile and nod and give him no cause for distress, and then when everything is warm and friendly between you, pull out the dagger and put it in his heart, and put the crown on your head and announce yourself to be Coronal.”

“Bravo, Gialaurys!” cried Septach Melayn. “You must have been taking lessons in treacherousness and perfidy from our beloved Duke Svor! And you are an apt pupil, it seems.”

“The treacherousness,” said Gialaurys coldly, “is all Korsibar’s, for stealing the crown. This would only put matters to rights again. Where’s the shame in that?”

“Do you think Korsibar will have no guards nearby?” Prestimion said. His voice was very mild; he was more amused than angered by Gialaurys’s suggestion, outrageous though it was. “I cut him down, and the next moment my body lies next to his on the throne-room floor. It will have been a very short reign for me. But I know you mean this as loving counsel, Gialaurys. You want me to be Coronal, I think, even more than I want it myself.”

“What will you do, then, when you come before Korsibar?” asked Svor.

Prestimion said, frowning, “I have no clear plan yet. What would you suggest for me, any of you, short of hiding daggers in my bosom?”

“Best not to go at all,” said Septach Melayn. “Failing that, to do much listening and little speaking, and when he makes you the offer, to say that you need time to consider it, that you must speak with your mother the Lady Therissa first, and see if you are needed more urgently at your Muldemar estate than here.”

“Good. That buys me a little time, but only a little.”

“I wish I had some shrewder thing devised for you,” Septach Melayn said.

“As do I.”

“This audience, you say, is in the throne-room?” Svor asked. “Not the Coronal’s office?”

“The throne-room, yes,” Prestimion said.

Svor’s expression darkened. He turned a little, so that he was staring out the window instead of looking at Prestimion. “I see trouble in this. He fears you; the royal office, grand as it is, evidently isn’t grand enough for him for this meeting; he wants all the majesty of the throne-room surrounding him when he addresses you. Which is a sign of weakness in his soul. An enemy whose soul is weak but who nevertheless has great power at his command is more deadly than a strong one. He’ll strike out of fear, like a cornered snake. Take care, Prestimion.”

“Yes. That I surely will.” He threw open the door of his great wardrobe closet and studied the array of garments within. “The next great problem, gentlemen: shall I dress in something rich and grand, as befits a high prince summoned before a Coronal? Or will it trouble him if I do, and shall I dress more modestly, like the humble vassal he no doubt would like me to be, which will put him at his ease?” Prestimion laughed. “And yet I don’t want him to take me too lightly. Perhaps the middle range is best, in this as in all other things.”

He chose, in the end, simple but costly clothing, a white silken tunic that looked more like cotton, and gray hose of the same deceptive material, and an ordinary red cape cunningly worked around its borders—but only there—with figures in cloth of gold, and plain leather buskins. At the last moment he drew forth the green stone amulet of Thalnap Zelifor, the corymbor on the golden chain, and slipped it around his neck.

Gialaurys and Septach Melayn accompanied him as far as the Inner Castle, leaving him at the entrance to the throne-room precinct itself. Duke Svor, having a prior meeting with a lady of Duke Kanteverel’s following—for that was a great thing with Svor, the attention he paid to ladies, and they to him—did not go with them.

Korsibar was esconced most magnificently atop the Confalume Throne when Prestimion entered. He wore a grand robe of rich scarlet velvet over his Coronal’s colors of green and white, and the starburst crown gleamed on his brow with the brilliance of the new star in the heavens that had signaled his advent, and he held himself sternly upright in his seat to accentuate the grandeur of his powerful form. About his throat was the Vildivar Necklace, its golden links ablaze with sapphire and ruby and topaz, and his belt of black serpent-skin was studded with tourmalines and blue quartz, and on his finger was the massive fiery ring that had been Lord Moazlimon’s, a great diamond set round with jasper and onyx. It was exactly as Svor had said it would be, Prestimion thought: Korsibar, uncertain of himself within that kingly exterior of his, had opted for the full theatricality of his position in some fevered hope of maintaining an advantage over him thereby.

Well, he was impressive, that much had to be granted. And of course the throne itself was the most majestic possible setting for a king. Prestimion, looking at it now, felt a fresh pang of anguish and loss, knowing that this was to have been his. The massive slab of black opal, that great mahogany pedestal, the silver pillars, the golden canopy, the glister of the gems encrusting the ceiling-beams, the tapestries, the shining floor, everything: Confalume must have poured the wealth of five provinces into this room.

Building it, all unknowingly, for his own son. His own son.

Korsibar said, “Come closer, Prestimion. The echoes in here are very bad if you stand so far away.”

Prestimion advanced another couple of steps. There was no one in the room other than he and Korsibar, though an ample body of guards stood just outside. The enthroned Korsibar loomed far above him. Prestimion had to look up, up, up, to meet his eyes.

“Well, Prestimion—” Korsibar began.

And stopped again. For Prestimion had not knelt; Prestimion had not made the starburst; Prestimion had not shown in any way that he was in the presence of his king.

Take care, Prestimion, Svor had advised.

Yes. Yes. But in this moment of confrontation Prestimion felt a terrible paralysis coming over him, and at the same time fury rising like a red column within his frozen body.

He could not kneel to this man.

He could not make the starburst.

This was the first time he had been alone with Korsibar since before that awful day when Korsibar had stolen the crown. Then they had been friends, more or less, two carefree young princes of the Castle; but now one was a king and one was not, one sat high up on a throne of black opal with a crown on his head and a robe of scarlet velvet on his shoulders, and the other stood humbly below him in a simple tunic and buskins. The immense wrongness of all that now took possession of Prestimion here in the overwhelming grandeur of Lord Confalume’s throne-room. He struggled fiercely to maintain his self-control. But he felt himself losing the struggle.

Korsibar said, “I know how difficult this must be for you, Prestimion.”

“Yes.” Very tightly.

“You should say, Yes, my lord.’”

Prestimion moistened his lips. “I know that I should.”

“Say it, then.”

“Korsibar—”

’’Lord Korsibar.”

“Can you really know how hard this is for me? As you sit there on the throne, with the jewelry of past kings all over you and the crown resting on your brow—”

“I am the Coronal Lord, Prestimion.”

“You have the throne, yes. You wear the crown.”

Color came into Korsibar’s swarthy face. This is going all wrong, Prestimion thought. He was heading for the brink of an abyss, and there was no calling himself back. Unconsciously his hand stole to the Vroonish amulet at his breast, and he rubbed up and down along its cool green surface until he realized what he was doing, and then he took his hand away.

“Please, Prestimion. A Coronal shouldn’t say ‘please,’ but there it is. I want us to be friends. I want you to hold high power in the land, to sit in the Council with me and offer all that you have to offer, which is considerable. But there are certain formalities that have to be observed.”

“Your father said ‘please’ to me too, when I went to him in the Labyrinth to ask him if he meant to allow your taking of the crown to stand. ‘Please, Prestimion,’ he said, and began to weep. So now I’ve heard that word from a Coronal and a Pontifex too. If indeed you are a Coronal, Korsibar.”

Korsibar sucked his breath in sharply.

“Prestimion—this is very dangerous, Prestimion—”

“Yes.”

He was over the brink now. There was no returning from it: he must plunge all the way.

“I was warned against doing this,” said Korsibar. “Nevertheless, I felt I owed you a place on the Council. It’s yours if you want it, still. But you must tell me that you recognize me as Coronal, and show me that you do.”

“No,” Prestimion said, staring steadily and coldly upward at the man on the throne.

“No?”

“This is too much to ask of me.”

“It is essential, Prestimion. Or there will be a terrible breach between us.”

“Creating a breach was not what I meant to do, I think, when I decided to come here today. I had no wish to thwart you. But actually seeing you on the throne changes everything for me: it allows me no other choice but to say what I have said. I’ll take that Council seat, Korsibar, if you are still willing to give it to me, for I think it would be best that you and I work together to avoid chaos in the world, and it is not my desire to be the one who brings that chaos down upon us.”

“Which gives me great pleasure to hear.”

“I am not done,” said Prestimion inexorably. “You should know that I will take that Council seat with the understanding that it’s an interim Council, the Council of an unlawful regime, which is operating only until the present constitutional situation is made regular. I tell you, Korsibar, that I regard the world as having no legitimate Coronal at this time.”

There. The words had been said. It was like throwing a gauntlet. Going back was impossible now.

Korsibar stared. A vein stood out in high relief on his forehead, as though his skull were about to explode. His face was bright with heat. It had taken on a deeper scarlet hue than that of his robe.

For a moment he appeared unable to speak.

Then, in a dark, congested voice: “Will you not retreat from that statement, Prestimion?”

Prestimion, looking up unwaveringly at him, made no response.

Korsibar nodded grimly. Into the dread silence came a grunt from him as of a great pent-up force being released, and then the sharp sound of Korsibar clapping his hands a single time; and as the echoing vibrations of that clap went forth, a squadron of guardsmen rushed into the room. They had been waiting and ready, Prestimion realized, in some hidden chamber. Korsibar, livid, rose to his full height and pointed to him, and cried in a voice like thunder, “Here is a traitor! Arrest him! Take him to the Castle vaults!”

Septach Melayn was in his chambers, feinting at shadows with his rapier to keep his eye sharp and his balance pure, as he was wont to do for at least an hour every day, when Gialaurys came bursting in without announcement, crying, “Prestimion’s taken! He’s chained up in one of Lord Sangamor’s tunnels!”

“What’s this? What?” Septach Melayn sheathed his weapon and bounded across the room, catching up the loose front of Gialaurys’s doublet in his fist and thrusting his face into that of the other man. “Taken? How? Why?”

“He had the audience with Korsibar, and it went badly. Angry words were spoken. And then Korsibar called for his guardsmen and had Prestimion carried off to be arraigned for high treason. I have this from Serithorn’s nephew Akbalik, who was waiting in the antechamber to speak with Korsibar and heard the whole thing.”

’Taken,” said Septach Melayn again, in wonder. “Who would think that that hollow fool Korsibar could ever find the courage? No, I withdraw that, he has foolishness aplenty, but no dearth of bravery in him either. A bad thing it is, too, to have great courage without overmuch wisdom to temper it.” As he spoke he moved busily around the room, collecting some weapons, a few garments, other stray possessions, and thrusting them into a sack. “What madness this thing is! It’s the two-headed wizard that put him up to it, or perhaps Farquanor, who has enough evil guile in his soul to fill three heads,” he said. And a moment afterward: “Well, then, we must flee this place, you and I.”

“And leave Prestimion hanging in chains?” said Gialaurys in a tone of disbelief. “Surely not.”

“Do you imagine that you and I by ourselves can fight our way to his side and bring about his release?” Septach Melayn asked, laughing. “The two of us against all the Castle? It would be the wildest sort of folly.”

“But if we raised an outcry and a protest, and won the support of such as Oljebbin and Serithorn—”

“We’d never get the chance. There’s room in those dungeons for plenty more beyond Prestimion, my friend, and at this moment places are probably cleared for both of us. We’ll be able to do him little service if we’re hanging there beside him.”

“Would they dare?”

“Even Korsibar’s shrewd enough to know that doing a thing by halves is a certain way to fail at it. He’s tried already to have you killed right in front of everyone, or have you forgotten that? And now he’s made his move against Prestimion: how can he let us remain free? He’ll want to put us all away in one swoop.” Septach Melayn gave the heavyset man an impatient shove. “Come, Gialaurys, come! We need to be outside. From there we can work to win support for him, and freedom. Move that great bulk of yours, and let’s be on our way while we still have the chance.”

“Yes. Perhaps we should. Where to, though?”

“Ah,” Septach Melayn said, for that was a question he had not yet asked of himself. But after only an instant’s thought he said, “Muldemar, and Prestimion’s mother and brothers. They have to be told what’s happened; and after that there’ll be time to decide what to do next.” He shook his head angrily. “What a reversal and change of fortune this is, that he who should be sitting on the high throne is hurled into the deep vaults instead!”

“And Svor?” asked Gialaurys. “What of him?”

Septach Melayn made a wry face. “He’s off with one of his whores, some Bailemoona woman Kanteverel gave him. Who knows where he’s gone with her? We can’t spare the time to search from bedroom to bedroom all over the Castle. I’ll leave word for him of what’s taken place: it’s the best that we can do for him. What do you say to that?”

“You have my agreement on it. Svor will have to look after himself.”

“Go to your rooms, then, gather whatever things you’ll be taking with you. We should leave the Castle by the Gossif side, down the Spurifon parapet—you know the one I mean?—and out the old road that leads toward Huine. Going out Dizimaule way’s too risky: that’s where they’ll set up the roadblock first. But if the Divine’s with us they won’t even think of the Gossif side until after we’re gone.”

“A good plan. I’ll meet you in fifteen minutes by Kanaba Stairs, which go down behind the old parade-grounds.”

’Ten.”

’Ten, then.”

“And if I’m not there when you arrive, make your way out of the Castle on your own and head for Muldemar without me. I’ll do the same if you’re late. We dare not wait for each other.” A warm flash of comradely love came into Septach Melayn’s eyes, and he grasped Gialaurys’s tree trunk of an arm with his, gripping it from the great swelling muscle, and the other hand clasping Gialaurys for a moment about the back and shoulders. Then they hastened into the hallway.

All was clear out there. Gialaurys ran off toward the right, where his chambers lay, and Septach Melayn went the other way, out into the open space that was the Kryphon Cloister, which led to the tumbledown remains of Balas Bastion, with a maze of pathways beyond it that would take him around to the northern side of the Castle.

Septach Melayn’s expectation was that the very hugeness and intricacy of the Castle would work in his favor. He had no doubt now that guards were already out looking for him, and for Svor and Gialaurys also; but first they had to find him, and he was in motion through the almost infinite passageways and underpasses and crosswalks of the great building, so that their only hope was to stumble upon him by chance somewhere between his chambers and whichever exit from the Castle he chose to take. There were many of those, though most were rarely used. Septach Melayn knew the Castle well, and was quick-minded as well as quick on his feet. He moved steadily forward. Now and again he saw groups of guardsmen in the distance, but they did not seem to see him and perhaps did not even yet know that he was being sought; and in any case it was always possible to find some alternative route that took him toward his goal.

All went well, though his path was somewhat more circuitous than the one he had originally planned to take, on account of the deviations made necessary by these glimpses he had of guardsmen ahead. He sprinted easily and swiftly through a courtyard whose name he had forgotten, where a host of headless eroded marble statues bearing the stains of five thousand years had been piled in a sad heap, and over a bridge that he thought was called Lady Thiin’s Overpass, and down a spiraling brick-edged rampart to the Tower of Trumpets, which led to the staircase that would put him on the Castle’s outer face.

There, to his great annoyance, he encountered four men in the colors of the Coronal’s guard, who arrayed themselves at the head of the stairs as though they meant to block his way. That did indeed seem to be their intention. Their stance was a distinctly unfriendly one.

“Put up your weapons and let me pass,” he told them without a moment’s pause. “I have no time to waste in talk.”

“And where are you going in such a hurry?” asked one, who had on a captain’s helmet.

“No time, either, to answer questions. Step aside: you will regret it if you hinder me. I am Septach Melayn.”

“We know your name. You are the very one we seek,” said the captain, though he looked glum enough about it, and the man who stood beside the captain seemed downright dejected at the thought of doing battle with so famous a swordsman as Septach Melayn. “Come with us peacefully. By order of the Coronal Lord Korsibar you are herewith—”

“You have had your warning,” said Septach Melayn, and drew.

His arm was still warm from the rapier practice of a little while before, and more than ready. He parried a wide wobbly thrust from the captain as though it were a child’s, and put the point of his sword into the man’s cheek, then pivoted and sliced down into another guardsman’s shoulder on his backsweep, and took three fingers from a third with one quick flick of his hand, all of it accomplished in his lazy-looking way, which seemed so effortless and easy. The fourth guardsman was armed with a small gray metal device, an energy-thrower, which he tried desperately to aim and fire. But he must never have been faced with the need to use the thing before. His attempts to operate the activator catch were hampered by the violent shaking of his entire arm. Septach Melayn severed it at the wrist and stepped around him as the man began to set up the uncomprehending wailing that usually followed upon such events.

The whole thing had taken no more than a few moments. But the noise coming from his maimed victims was attracting other guardsmen now; Septach Melayn could see them overhead, heading down the spiral rampart toward him. He circled quickly to his left, past the ruined eastern face of the Tower of Trumpets, and was gratified to find a huge dry underground cistern there, running deep and long, with a glimmer of daylight showing at its far end. Crawling quickly into it, he ran some fifty paces and scrambled up into the light, emerging on a lower level in a place he could not at first recognize, but which he saw to be the back end of Spurifon Parapet. That was the very place he sought.

There was no sign of Gialaurys. Very likely he had been here already, and gone onward upon seeing that his companion was going to be late; but on the off chance that Gialaurys might be even tardier yet, Septach Melayn lingered at the parapet a few minutes, until he caught sight of a fresh group of guardsmen moving about two levels higher up.

It was foolish to stay longer. The residential quarters of the guardsmen were close by this district. A party of them might come upon him without even looking for him, simply while going off duty, and then he would have to spill more blood. Better to move along, and swiftly.

Septach Melayn darted down the slope of the parapet and through the small, ancient arched gateway that gave exit from the Castle on its little-used northern side. The road to Huine stretched before him. If he took it downslope a little way and then went circling about eastward, it would bring him to the juncture with the Gossif road, and Gossif was adjacent among the Inner Cities to Tidias, which was Septach Melayn’s own birthplace; and not far beyond Tidias was Muldemar. It was his deeply felt hope to see Gialaurys again when he reached there. The task of springing Prestimion free of Korsibar’s grasp was not one that he would care to tackle by himself.

He looked back. Still no Gialaurys. Let him be safe out of the Castle already, thought Septach Melayn. May the Divine speed him on his way. And turned his own lanky legs toward the road that led down the Mount’s long shoulder.